Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

When Darrel Curtis was twelve years old, he made his little brother cry.

Well, no. He made Sodapop cry, which was different than Ponyboy. Darry made Pony cry every day—it almost became a hobby, with how easy Pony was to rile. Darry poked Pony in the ribs, and Pony bellowed with rage. Darry wasn't quick enough serving Pony's peas at dinner, and Pony squawked indignantly. Darry stuck his tongue out at Pony, and Pony dissolved into sobs. Sometimes, simply looking at the six-year-old a second too long was enough to send Pony rushing to tattle.

Soda was different. They were close enough in age to be buddies, and Soda never got on Darry's nerves the way Pony did. Soda was eight, tough as a firecracker and twice as loud, scrawny, scabby-kneed. Soda’s joy was all-consuming; he burned with it, a ball of fire in the cosmos of Darry's life.

But Soda never did anything half-way. When he was happy, you forgot how to feel anything else. And Soda was happy all the time. But oh, when Soda cried, you'd think the entire world cried with him, like every drop of sorrow to ever exist was stuffed inside his tiny body, desperate for escape.

"He's got a big heart," Darry's father had once explained, one hand on Darry's head while the other held a weeping Soda close. "Big as a horse's heart, that's our Sodapop. He feels things different than we do."

Darry never cried at all, and on the rare occasions when he couldn't help it (like the time he busted his arm), he scrubbed away the tears before anyone saw. But Soda bawled without shame. He cried over things Darry couldn't fathom caring about, like books he struggled reading and roadkill he felt sorry for, worms drying on the sidewalk and dogs in the pound. Darry didn't understand, and it scared him to death. Soda wasn't meant for sadness, the way daisies weren't meant to be ugly. Darry wanted to fight the things that hurt Soda until smiles were all his little brother knew.

Their mother told stories about when Soda was a baby, and Darry would sit patiently beside his crib, waiting to offer comfort if he needed it. "You were only four, but already a little soldier," she said. "But he never cried when his big brother was close."

Those words made Darry's heart swell. The title “big brother” rested on his shoulders like a knighting, a benediction. He loved both his brothers—even if Ponyboy was small, and whiny, and quick to tattle. But Soda, golden haired and silver-tongued, with laughter that bubbled up from his soul and sprouted wings—Darry loved Soda more than he loved anything in the world, more than superman or his friends, more than football, more than his parents.

Soda might not be a baby anymore, but Darry was still the little soldier, waiting to comfort him when he cried.

—

It happened on a Saturday afternoon, the kind where heat sticks to your skin and hides in your throat. One of the rare days when Darry's school friends weren't vacationing in the alps, or playing golf with their dads, or whatever snobby activity rich kids did in the summer. They invited him to the park. He wasn't from their neighborhood, but in football, no one cared whether you had fancy store-bought pants or patches in your jeans. No matter which side of the tracks you were from, everyone threw the same.

Darry's friends fought over sides. They all wanted to be on his team, and that made him feel good inside, a bubble of warmth nestled in his chest. Eventually teams were picked—he captained one, and Charles the other—lines were drawn, places taken. They were about to start when a shout cut through the summer heat.

Soda raced across the grass, gap-toothed and smiling. "Shoot," he wheezed, skidding to a stop. "Almost thought you started without me!"

Darry grinned. Soda had been playing with Ponyboy when he left, so Darry slipped out quietly, afraid Pony would want to tag along. But he'd hoped Soda would catch up. The teams were uneven, and they needed another boy. While Soda wasn't the strongest, he was good in a pinch.

Darry turned to introduce Soda to his friends, only for the words to die on his tongue when he was met by a chorus of groans.

"Aw, c'mon Curtis, who invited the kid?"

"Yeah, he's too little to play."

"He'll slow us down."

”He stinks of grease.”

Soda's gaze flit from Darry, to the group of boys, then back to Darry again, brow wrinkling. Unlike Darry, who'd shot up quicker than a weed, Soda hadn't started growing yet. But he was tough, and quick on his feet, and capable of taking a hefty wallop without sniveling. Unlike Pony (still a baby, in Darry's eyes), Soda never slowed Darry down.

But the other boys didn't know that. They saw a tow-headed little kid, dirt on his face and holes in his t-shirt, grinning like he owned the world. Their irritation bled out and pooled at Darry's feet, stinking in the sultry air. They'd come to play football with Darry, not pal around with some snot-nosed little brother.

Soda scuffed the dirt. Darry looked at his brother—at the stupid, dopey grin still stretched across his face—and heat crept up his neck. The collective weight of his friends' stares burned through his skin, razor sharp needles of judgment. The patches on his jeans chafed. The holes in his shoes itched. He'd never cared before. Now, their differences felt like the only important thing in the world.

If the ground opened up and swallowed Darry whole, he would thank it, and ask why it had taken so long.

Then, Charles stepped forward, patient and amused, like he and Darry were the only ones to know the punchline of a joke. "It's okay," he said, clapping Darry on the shoulder. "I get it, man. My little brother's just as annoying."

"Yeah," Darry muttered, his face burning. "Annoying."

The word festered between them. Soda's grin faltered. "Dar?"

"Go home, Soda."

Soda picked at the hem of his shirt. "I thought—"

"We don't want to play with you," Darry snapped. "Don't be such a baby!"

He'd said those words to Ponyboy a thousand times, and it always ended the same: an enraged squawk— "I'm telling mom!" and Darry desperately apologizing before a gleeful Pony trotted off to tattle. Ponyboy was six, but he had a mind of his own and a mouth to match. Darry and Ponyboy fought like it was the only sport they were good at.

Not Soda. Gentle, sensitive Soda flinched at the harsh words. He took a step away from Darry, scanning the group of hostile faces. He blinked quickly. His eyelashes were wet.

"Sorry," he said, ever soft, before turning and bolting.

Darry's friends laughed.

"Close call," Charles said, slinging an arm around Darry's shoulders. "Sometimes you just gotta be tough with 'em, you know?"

Darry thought he might be sick. "I made him cry," he said. The words echoed hollowly in his ears, an anthem. He made Soda cry.

Charles shrugged. "So? I make my siblings cry all the time.”

Maybe he was right. Darry and Soda were brothers, after all, and no strangers to squabbling. Petty arguments over who sat where at the dinner table, borrowed comics, sports teams, the last slice of cake and who would do dishes. Darry had an explosive temper, and Soda was like a raincoat—he laughed in the face of Darry's anger, the arguments rolling right off his back. They fought, and sometimes they brawled, and sometimes their father had to force them apart before they broke something.

Then one would accidentally make the other laugh, and suddenly, they were watching cartoons together like nothing ever happened.

This was different. Darry had said those things on purpose. Shame had filled his mouth, poison on his tongue, dripping into his voice, his words. In that moment, he wanted to hurt Soda. He wanted to impress his friends. In the end, punching Soda in the face would have had the same effect.

Suddenly Darry was running, the boys' surprised cries at his back, while the memory of Soda’s hurt hung suspended before his eyes.

He’d made Soda cry. Soda wasn’t supposed to cry when his big brother was close.

—

When Darry skidded through the front gate, his father was waiting for him on the porch.

"Darrel," he said, kindly as sweet tea, "Stop a minute, let's chat."

Darry paused. "Did you see Soda?"

"Yup."

His stomach clenched: upsetting Soda was bad enough, but now he was gonna get in trouble for it. But when his dad sat on the top step and patted the space beside him, he didn't look mad. He had that easy smile, the one Soda inherited. Darry slumped down and twisted his hands together in his lap. Dad didn't say anything for a few moments, choosing instead to let the silence ferment between them. He had a way of doing that—going silent, all smiles and long stares, until yelling seemed easier to bear than the quiet disappointment. Darry squirmed.

Finally, Mr. Curtis broke the tension. "Your brother was crying, just now. Blew right through the house and into his room. Won't come out."

Darry hugged his knees to his chest. "Did he say what about?"

"Nope. I thought maybe you knew."

He didn't ask, but the question loomed between them. Darry kicked at the ground. He hoped he did get in trouble. He probably deserved it. "I told him to get lost."

"Huh. I thought you invited him to play."

"I did, but—"A million excuses cycled through his head—Soda's too young, or Soda was being a brat, or, or, or—but his dad looked at him, and Darry's heart deflated. The shame still simmered on his tongue, hot and painful. He was his father's son; he wouldn't lie.

"I wanted to impress the guys."

Dad hummed. "Did it work?"

"I— yeah. I think so."

Staring at the sky, not looking at Darry, Mr. Curtis still didn't seem upset. Only thoughtful, the way Pony got sometimes, like a million different tunes were playing in his head, overlapping. "D'you know, Darry, your brother loves you more than anything in the world?"

Darry hesitated. "Yeah?"

"He won't say it—probably doesn't know it himself—but if you look real close, you'll see. The way he talks about you, the way he tries to ride his bike like you, and wear the same clothes. His obsession with superman and all the comics you read." Dad nudged Darry with his shoulder. "You're his hero, Dar. He looks up to you."

The words plunged like rocks to the bottom of his stomach, weighing him down from the inside. Darry was just a kid. A kid who yelled too much and made stupid friends and said mean things. Responsibility was a cold weight. He didn’t want to carry it.

Dad poked him in the ribs. "What's up?"

"It's just—" he rubbed his nose with the back of his hand, the words clumsy in his mouth. "Sometimes it's hard being the oldest. Feel like I gotta be perfect."

His dad laughed. "You ain't superman, kid. You're gonna fail those boys more times than you can count. That's when you gotta stand up straight and take responsibility." He clapped Darry on the shoulder, squeezing gently, and suddenly his voice was oh so soft, sinking right through Darry's heart. "Perfection ain’t what makes a man, Dar—it’s holding yourself to your mess-ups, and making 'em right."

Darry nodded. He didn't understand, not really, but maybe one day, when he was old and grown, maybe he would. Maybe then he'd be the man his father expected of him. Maybe then, he'd be the brother Soda and Pony deserved.

He was glad for his parents. If it were just him on his own, he'd probably screw everything up.

Dad squeezed his shoulder again. "You ready to go in there and make it right?"

"Yeah," Darry said. He stood, spine straight, shoulders back. "Yeah, I think I am."

—

Soda was in his room, sitting on the bed. Not doing anything, just sitting, fingers tapping idly against his knees. It made an uncanny picture, Soda so still, displaced from his usual enthusiasm.

His face was flushed, eyelashes wet. When the door creaked open, he swallowed hard.

"Hey," Darry said, pressing his face to the crack

Soda smiled, because of course he did, but his eyes didn't match his mouth. "Hey."

"Sorry. For earlier."

"S'okay," Soda said, wiping his nose. "I shouldn't ha" butted in."

Darry pushed the door open further. "Those guys were jerks."

Soda shrugged. His eyes were fixed to his socked feet—stripes on the left, polka-dots on the right. He didn't look up.

Darry stepped all the way into the room, shutting the door firmly. "I was a jerk"

"Nah," said Soda, "you was just giving it straight."

"I was giving it mean."

"Mean is still straight."

With a sigh, Darry threw himself on the bed. Soda shuffled to make space, but even so, they were pressed together, shoulder to hip, Darry on his back, Soda hunched over with his arms around his knees. Sometimes they had sleepovers in this bed and smuggled a flashlight under the covers to read superman. Soda always giggled too much and got them caught, but Darry never minded. Rather get yelled at by his mom than not hear Soda's laughter burning up the dark.

Darry poked him. "You wanna go down to the stables?"

"What about your friends?"

"I'd rather play with you."

Soda finally looked up. "Yeah?"

"Yeah."

So they went to the stables, where Soda gazed starry-eyed at the horses, chattering a nonsensical stream of words in Darry's direction, and just like that, he'd already forgotten the hurt of the morning. Forgiveness came as naturally to Sodapop as breathing.

Darry wasn't so quick to move on. When he closed his eyes, he still saw the tear tracks on Soda's cheeks, the way his voice went quiet and bottom lip trembled. "Don't be a baby." The venom of those words roiled in his gut, the desire to scream, to hurt. The tears caught in Soda's eyelashes, this beautiful baby brother who was kinder than Darry could ever hope to be. The sickening knowledge: I hurt him on purpose.

"Hey, buddy," he said, bumping Soda's shoulder and interrupting the stream of horse facts. "You're pretty alright, y'know."

Soda looked up at him—wide-eyed, ever trusting, too forgiving, like Darry hung the moon and stars. He had too much love stuffed into his chest, spilling out over his ribs and splitting him at the seams. Soda forgave like it was the only reason he existed; Soda forgave like it was the only thing he knew how to do.

Without warning, he flung sunburnt arms around Darry's waist. "I love you more than anyone in the world, Dar! You’re so cool."

Right there, surrounded by hay and the stink of horses, with Soda's face smashed against his shoulder, Darry made a promise to himself:

Darrel Curtis would never make his little brother cry. Not Sodapop, not again. Never, ever again

And if it was wishful thinking, making a promise he couldn't keep, then at least he could try, couldn't he? And maybe somehow, the trying would become doing, and maybe, maybe, maybe, he'd succeed. Maybe his father was wrong. Maybe he could be superman, if only in this way, if only to Sodapop.

(And right there, surrounded by hay and the stink of horses, with Soda's face smashed against his shoulder, Darry Curtis lied to himself for the very first time.)

Chapter Text

The second time was an accident.

Darry was eighteen and a few weeks shy of graduation. He’d grown up and grown into himself, with the whole world at his fingertips. Football, good grades, perseverance, respect. Everything he needed to take his future by the throat and transform it into something worthwhile. A future without dirt under his fingernails, the stains in his clothes that never seemed to come out, rusted cars and fraying shoes. A future where he could walk the streets without shouts of “greaser!” being hurled like rotten vegetables at his back.

East Side grease might run through his veins, but striding down the Will Rogers halls, he never felt more like a king. He’d done it all—star football player, boy of the year, top grades. The teachers patted his shoulder in passing. The students sent him friendly nods and whistled his name, grease and soc alike. Clusters of girls huddling around their lockers giggled when he strode past.

Popularity meant nothing, but the respect sat nicely in his chest. For once in his life he felt seen for more than just his hair and the holes in his jeans.

He was on his way to lunch with the football team—West Siders, most of them, but friendly enough, despite the burgeoning tension between greasers and socs—when he noticed a familiar figure slouching out of the principal's office. Darry’s heart sank. He’d recognize that golden cowlick anywhere.

“Sorry guys, I gotta bail,” he said, breaking away from the group.

Paul groaned. “Not again, Curtis! What are you, some kinda babysitter?”

“Nah, man, unless you still need one.”

They laughed and catcalled as he jogged away. Their camaraderie clung to him like a halo when he caught up with Soda and grabbed him in a headlock. “What’d you do this time, glue Miss Anderson’s glasses to her face?”

Soda lit up like an electric bulb. “Darry! Where did you come from?”

Their paths didn’t often cross, but whenever they passed in the halls, Darry made a point of stopping to check in. To the undiscerning eye, Soda was all charming grins and boisterous laughter, a heartthrob in the making. To Darry, he broadcast his misery like a radio beacon. Given his inability to sit still for longer than ten seconds, school was a prison Soda couldn’t escape. 

Darry, disciplined to a fault, didn’t really understand. He thrived on the work, like a challenge to be bested, and here at the finish line, he’d come out on top. But these days, he didn’t understand most things about his brothers.

(Just the other morning, he found a book of poetry under Ponyboy’s bed. Poetry.)

Soda was a simpler creature than Ponyboy, content with everything, and happy almost all the time. Tears didn’t come as quickly as when they were kids, but he still had that bleeding heart— “Big as a horse’s heart, ” their dad used to say. And unlike Darry, who was on his way to becoming top student at fourteen, Soda spent most of his freshman tenure in the principal's office.

From the look of things, that’s where he was going to spend the next four years.

Darry slung an arm around Soda’s shoulders. “So what’d you get busted for?”

“Oh, the usual,” he said blithely. He was walking kinda funny, though Darry wouldn’t have noticed if he weren’t draped over the kid’s back. “Bit of truancy, bit of clowning, bit of getting on teach’s nerves for being too damn stupid. Say—” he elbowed Darry in the ribs— “that crack about Anderson’s glasses, that’s real good! I might try that one.”

Darry snorted. “Sometimes I think you like getting hauled into the principal's office.”

“If I’m gonna be there anyway, might as well give ‘em a reason.”

Darry didn’t know what to make of that, but his thoughts were cut short by a group of kids jostling past. Socs, all of them—perfectly coiffed hair, shirts tucked in, pimply-faced and petty. Someone shoved roughly into Soda, their elbow in his side. He made a soft huff of pain as his back hit the lockers.

“Whattsa matter, Sodapop?” the boy jeered. “Principal bust you up ‘cause you got no brains behind that pretty face?”

“Aw, Tommy, you think I’m pretty?” Soda grinned, sharp as cat’s teeth, and batted his eyelashes. “What’ll your girlfriend think?”

Darry choked down a laugh. The soc, on the other hand, went scarlet.

“Dirty greaser,” he spat. The energy shifted with the insult—Darry felt the snap of it on his skin, simmering beneath his fists, the whisper of fight crackling in the crowded hall. The soc lunged at Soda. Darry caught him easily by the collar and slammed him into the lockers. He was a toothpick in Darry’s hands, a few years younger and many pounds scrawnier, all mouth, no muscle. Darry loomed over him.

Standing like this, his hands fisted in an expensive polo shirt, with the contrast of tanned skin against pristine fabric, Darry’s pedigree might as well be written on his forehead. The group of socs backed away from him. The kid in his hands squirmed, disgust and terror warring in his eyes.

Dirty greaser.

For a moment, Darry felt it too—disgust churning in his stomach at that glimpse of himself through posh eyes. Grease on his hands. Grease in his future. Grease smeared through his brother’s hair.

“Touch my brothers, find out what happens,” he snapped, giving the kid a final shake before dropping him to the concrete floor. “C’mon, Soda.”

They made it outside. The sun sparkled off the grass, vibrant with spring’s freshness, the taste of graduation in the air. Soda hadn’t stopped grinning since Darry shoved a soc into a locker. “You’re so cool.”

“Twerp.” Darry smacked him upside the head. “Hey, are you limping?”

“Too much roughhousing with Steve.”

Darry sighed. At eighteen and fourteen, the gap was different than when they were kids, wider in a way he hadn’t expected. Darry was on the threshold of adulthood, whereas Soda had barely hit puberty, gangly limbs and lean muscle, his voice still cracking more often than he’d like (and much to Darry’s amusement). With Darry towering over him like this, Soda had never seemed more like a kid.

But some things hadn’t changed at all. Soda was still crazy about horses, and chocolate cake, and cars. He couldn’t sit still for longer than a minute before one or both knees began bouncing wildly. He’d lost his freckles, but his hair still bleached wheat gold in the summer, and his eyes sparkled with mischief. He could charm the socks of anyone, even teachers.

Above all, he lived in the moment. The future could take care of itself; Sodapop Curtis existed only in the here and now, nowhere else.

That’s what worried Darry the most.

“Y’know,” he said, nudging Soda’s shoulder, “you should try knuckling down more.”

Soda rolled his eyes. “Save the lecture for college, grandpa.”

“I mean it. That report card gets awful important when you’re grown. You’re gonna wish you’d been hitting the books instead of goofing off with Steve.”

“Won’t matter,” Soda said loftily. “I’m gonna drop out the first chance I get.”

Darry snorted. “Mom will never let you.”

“I’ll convince her.” He started walking again, shoulders hunched. “I ain’t the college type.”

“How would you know?” Darry asked, a spark of annoyance edging his voice. “You haven’t even thought about it.”

“So?”

“All I’m saying is, you’re being dumb.”

Soda smiled tightly. “Gee, Dar, you’re starting to sound like my teachers.”

“Maybe they got a point.”

He released a pent-up breath, the reckless grin from earlier melting away. At its loss, Darry’s guilt followed close behind. With Ponyboy, the push-and-pull never ended—Pony was only twelve, but with a vicious tongue, capable of cutting, capable of flaying you alive. He and Darry were both impossibly stubborn and ready to give as much as they gave at a moment’s notice. Darry sometimes forgot that Soda required a gentler approach. 

Being bossy came naturally to Darry; he meant no harm in it.

Soda was loping away, and Darry ran to catch up. He slung an arm around his brother’s shoulders again, squeezing in silent apology. “Forget it, man, I ain’t your dad,” he teased, ruffling Soda’s hair. “No skin off my nose if you wanna be stupid.”

As it turned out, that was the wrong thing to say. Soda made a choked little inhale, and when Darry turned to look at him, tears were coursing down his cheeks.

Darry fumbled in shock, a litany of curses tumbling from his lips. “Hey— whoa, man, okay— hey, I didn’t mean it—”

Soda never did anything half-way. It was all or nothing, happy or devastated, feelings exploding from him like dynamite on a hot day. But now he seemed to be fighting with himself, gasping and scrubbing at his eyes like he could stuff the tears back in. He clapped a hand over his mouth, choking on breath, sobs ripping from his throat and between his fingers. Like a snowball pushed down a hill, too late to be stopped and gathering strength.

Darry still wasn’t sure what he said. Panic sizzled under his skin. He was hyper-aware of the kids stepping around them on the sidewalk, curiosity slowing their feet. Soda had no shame about being a sensitive little cuss, but not around socs. Never around socs.

“Okay, buddy—” Darry grabbed Soda by the shoulders and maneuvered him off the path, behind the utility shed— “let’s take a breath, yeah?”

Soda was taking many breaths, in quick succession, one piling right on top of the other. He sounded like he’d forgotten air existed, like an invisible hand clamped down around his throat. The gasping was painful; it ripped at Darry, reminded him of every bad thing he’d ever felt. Not much was capable of making Darrel Curtis feel out of control. But his little brother crying was top of the list.

“Hey man, you gotta talk to me. Are you sick? Did someone hurt you?” Then, petrified, he added in panic, “it’s me, ain’t it. What did I do? I’ll say sorry, just tell me what I did.”

“No,” Soda managed to gasp. “No— ‘m just—” he clutched at his chest, panting— “bein’ a baby.”

That’s when Darry saw a streak of red seeping through the back of Soda’s jeans. “Golly moses, kid, did Steve do that? ”

“No! I’m fine! ” Soda shouted, more forceful than a punch, as if saying it would make it so. He heaved a long, ragged breath, clenched his eyes shut, and the world went silent. Like someone had taken the batteries out of a clock, cutting off the tick-tick-tick. Soda’s chest stilled, his tears stopped, and a bone dry smile stretched sickly-sweet across his mouth.

“Sorry. Didn’t mean to bust the dam there.”

The whiplash mood shift shivered under Darry’s skin. “What the hell, kid?”

“Sorry,” Soda said again, as though it were an explanation. Darry was trying to turn him around, trying to pull his shirt up, and Soda wriggled away like a slippery little ferret. “Get off, I’m fine.”

Too late; Darry got him in a headlock. Welts littered the bare skin of his back, angry and red, trailing down under the hem of his jeans. Like a fortune teller reading palm lines, they spelled the future: Darrel Curtis was gonna bust someone’s face before the day ended.

“Who did it?” he asked, letting Soda go. “’Cause that sure as hell didn’t come from roughhousing with Steve.”

Soda sighed and scrubbed at his face. “Leave it be, man.”

“Was it that soc pansy in the hall? Timmy or somethin’?”

“It don’t matter.”

“I’m gonna break his nose,” Darry said, turning to go.

Soda hauled him back, his fingernails cutting into Darry’s skin. “Will you knock it off? I could break that creep’s nose myself if I wanted.”

A fact Darry couldn’t deny. Soda was no weakling. He and Steve—even little Johnny Cade—had gotten into plenty of scrapes together, and gotten themselves out just fine. Bruised, yes, with black eyes and cracked lips, faces that made their mother click her tongue. But they gave as good as they got. 

(Once, a bully shouted a slur at Ponyboy, and Darry had watched Soda grind the loser’s face into the pavement while grinning the whole time. Darry had never been so proud.)

Besides, if Soda fought with socs, he would tell Darry straight out, even if he lost. Soda wore his heart on his sleeve, right alongside greaser pride.

“Can we just forget about it?” he asked now, wiping his nose with the back of his hand. His fingers twitched and tapped, picking at the hem of his shirt. “I need to get out of this hellhole before I go crazy.”

And it hit Darry like a zap of electricity:

“ Whattsa matter, Sodapop? Principal bust you up ‘cause you got no brains behind that pretty face?”

Soda slouching out of the office, manic cheerfulness and a limp.

There was no secret about what happened to the unlucky fools who found themselves behind a closed door in the principal’s office. Darry heard stories from Dallas; he’d seen the bruises. Principal Wilkerson and his belt, the one with the big shiny buckle. But Dallas Winston slashed tires and threatened the lunch ladies with his switchblade. Dally wore violence like a smile, as much of it as he could get, until it stained his teeth red. 

That didn’t make it better, those bruises, but Dally invited violence like a personal friend. He sought it, whether in the alleys behind Tim Shepherd’s place, or the halls of Will Rogers high.

Whereas Soda—sure, he goofed off, and couldn’t sit quietly for more than two seconds, and yeah, sometimes he and Steve pulled pranks, and his grades weren’t too good. But he was still a sweetheart, right down to the golden roots of his hair. What could Soda have possibly done to earn those kinds of bruises?

“Let me see that again,” Darry demanded, grabbing at Soda’s shirt. “Looks real bad.”

His brother squirmed away. “It’s fine, leave me alone.”

“Sodapop, you were crying—”

“I ain’t a bawl baby!” he snapped. (Which wasn’t quite true, but Darry didn’t debate the point.) “Teachers smack me all the time, ain’t nothing to cry about. I get worse from socs and the pain don’t bother me. It’s this place , Dar.”

His breathing began to quicken, tripping over itself as words tumbled off his tongue. He clutched at Darry’s shirt. “They close the doors and it’s like my head don’t stop ringing until I get out again. All them teachers with their pointy fingernails, telling me I’m stupid ‘cause the words don’t make sense, but it’s not my fault they’re so damn bad at explaining stuff! Nothing makes sense, and I think until my eyes hurt but the thinking ain’t enough ‘cause it still don’t make sense, it all jumbles together, and I hate it! ”

He shook Darry, like he could somehow force him to understand. “This place, Darry, this place is killing me.”

He’d lost Darry before the barrage of words even began. This was a conversation for their parents to navigate, not some dumb older brother who didn’t know the first thing about making people feel better, let alone his kid brother having an academic crisis. Powerlessness squirmed under Darry’s skin. 

“Buddy—” he licked his lips, throat dry— “I dunno, maybe you could try studying more?”

Soda’s shoulders dropped. He let go of Darry’s shirt, wiped his eyes one final time, and turned away. “You don’t get it.” The words tore away from him, whispery soft, as he walked away. “Nobody gets it.”

-

Paul Holden invited Darry over to study. Darry went, because the thought of going home was worse. He sank his feet into lush carpet and leaned his head against a pristine wall, no stains on the papering or scratches in the door. The fabric softener Paul’s mother used was overwhelming, stinking up the house with lavender. Darry’s pulse drummed inside his skull.

“Hey buddy, you sick?” Paul asked, poking Darry’s forehead with his pencil. “You’re messing up problems a third-grader could do.”

“Maybe,” he said. Restlessness stirred under his skin, the itch for release, for a fight. Blood and iron between his teeth. The textbook weighed like a brick in his hand. He wanted to throw it through someone’s window; he wanted to bash it into someone’s head. 

(Maybe that kid from earlier was right, maybe he was just another dirty greaser.)

Paul closed his book with a snap. “Get lost, man. You’re no fun tonight.”

So Darry went. He took the long way through the park. When he finally got home, the porch light flickered over an open door, and his parents were gone.

“Dad had to stay late at work, and mom went to pick him up,” said Ponyboy, who sprawled on the living room floor while doodling in his school books. His elbows scuffed over the old stains in the carpet, mystery marks from their childhood. Darry thought of persian rugs and clean wallpaper. The smell of lavender clung to his nose.

The shadow of Johnny Cade watched him from the corner. 

“Johnnycakes,” Darry said, leaning against the door frame, “you’re in Soda’s classes, yeah?”

“Yeah.” Johnny looked up at him with fawning eyes, bigger than his face. A bruise skimmed over his left cheekbone and slipped down beneath his jaw. Darry wondered if he would stay the night. “What digs?”

“Why did Soda get sent to the office?”

He shrugged. “No more reason than usual. Teach was asking grammar questions. He didn’t put his hand up or nothin’, but she kept calling on him. Thought he was giving dumb answers on purpose—he was laughing with the rest of us, playing it up like some big joke.”

A beat passed. Darry raised his eyebrows. “And?” 

Johnny fidgeted with his sleeve. “I just, I don’t think it was on purpose, y’know? I don’t think he knew the answers. And the more he got wrong, the madder she got.”

Darry rocked back on his heels. Ponyboy turned a page, the shuffle of paper filling up the silence. Twelve-years-old, and already burning through books faster than he could find them. He’d be one to watch, for sure—the kid was whip smart, when he wasn’t busy being stupid.

Soda was smart too, but in a different way. Soda’s smarts were in his hands and the hush of his voice.

“You gonna keep standin’ there?” Ponyboy asked tersely, moving his books out of Darry’s shadow. “You’re blocking the light.”

Darry snorted. “Isn’t it past your bedtime?”

“You can’t tell me what to do,” Ponyboy said, sticking out his tongue. “Stop bein’ a bossy-pants.”

The old stab of annoyance seared through Darry’s gut. What had he ever done to make Pony so crabby all the time? “You’re such a baby,” he snapped, and Pony hurled a pencil at him.

Darry retreated to the kitchen, where dinner waited for him on a covered plate. The kid’s mood swings were ridiculous—his parents should be sainted for their patience, because sometimes it took every ounce of Darry’s control not to smack Ponyboy into next week.

The bathroom door stood ajar, spilling a dollop of light into the hall. Darry barged in without knocking. 

“That kid,” he growled, slamming open the medicine cabinet. “One of these days I’m gonna wring his neck, see if I don’t.”

Soda laughed. “Liar. You love him to pieces.”

“He’s a brat.”

“He’s twelve.”

“You weren’t like that at twelve,” Darry said.

“Yeah, but you sure were.”

He whirled, spilling cotton balls into the sink. “I was not.”

Soda winked. “Truth hurts, big guy.”

Darry sighed, deflating. His middle brother perched on the edge of the bathtub, arms wrapped tight around his stomach. A smile graced his lips again, but his eyes were red, and when he looked up, a foreign hesitance flickered in his gaze.

Darry hated it. He didn’t know how to fix it, and that made him hate it more. Comfort was Soda’s specialty, not Darry’s. If only their mom was home. Shoot, even Ponyboy was better at this than Darry. He briefly considered dragging the kid out of the living room—until he remembered the pencil launched at him only moments before, and anger surged to life again. To hell with Ponyboy. Darry didn’t need the help of some snot-nosed brat.

Think like Soda, he willed himself, but he didn’t know how the kid thought anymore. Soda’s mind was a dark room, the lights switched off to Darry’s curious gaze. They were eighteen and fourteen. The chasm cracked open between them, an impassable distance. No one had taught Darry how to do this. He needed his mom.

Darry approached like he was cornering a spooked horse, one hand outstretched, placating, the other holding salve he nicked from the cupboard.

“C’mere, little buddy,” he said, an apology, pulling Soda to his feet. Soda complied, because of course he did. He fought socs. He didn’t fight his family, not even when they deserved it. Darry gently lifted the hem of his t-shirt.

They got him out of the shirt, and then Soda resignedly shimmied out of his jeans, too, kicking them into the corner. Darry spread ointment over tender skin, along the knobby curve of his vertebrae, and the backs of his thighs. Soda didn’t make a sound, but from how tightly he gripped the edge of the sink, white-knuckled and flinching, it was obvious Darry hurt him. Darry’s hands—blunt, powerful, rough with callouses— were made for football. They weren’t made for mothering.

Darry didn’t want to hurt Soda. He didn’t know how to stop.

“Did you tell mom?”

“Nah.” Soda squeezed the counter a little harder. “Don’t you go snitchin’, neither.”

Darry grunted. He couldn’t pretend not to understand; having to report his scrapes and misdeeds always made him feel pathetic, like he weren’t living up to the example his parents had set. But the thought of his kid brother in that office, forced down on the desk and getting the sharp end of a belt buckle, kindled a specific and peculiar kind of rage in Darry’s gut. 

It was different, getting beat up by socs. At least you could give as good as you got. But not adults. Adults, you had to take it, until they pounded the spark right outta your soul.

“You ain’t stupid, y’know,” he finally said, the words brushing through the stillness. “You’re just a different kind of smart.”

Soda’s shoulders curled inward. “I don’t care about being smart, Dar. Stupid ain’t a sin, and I think I’m happier stupid than not. It’s just that everyone else cares so damn much, and that’s what gets to me.”

He turned around, wincing. Darry reached to stabilize him. Soda was a live wire beneath the skin, all energy, humming. “I just don’t get why it matters. If I’m happy being stupid, why does some old dame gotta tell me I ain’t? Why’s it so bad to stay in Tulsa and work with my hands instead of my brains?”

Darry couldn’t fathom such contentment. Tulsa was a concrete cage, dust and motor oil, grease. The street signs hemmed him in. The power lines, the bars of his prison. “There’s a whole world out there, Sodapop,” he said. “Maybe one day you’ll wanna see it.”

“The world has nothin’ on what I already got.”

“You don’t know that. You might be happy if—”

Soda groaned, scrubbing his face with his hands. “Why do I gotta want what you want in order to be happy?”

Darry couldn’t respond to that.

With a sigh, Soda flipped off the lights. Darkness enveloped them, a gentle embrace. The mirror caught the silhouette of Soda’s face, the glimmer of light in Darry’s eyes. Silence stretched between them. Thick. Warm. Broken only by the shuffle of socked feet and Soda’s hesitation.

Then, softly, cautiously, he leaned forward to press his cheek against Darry’s shoulder. Darry could feel him inhale, every rise and fall of his body, every little huff of breath. Darry wasn’t one for physical contact, but Soda craved it; anything that could ground him in the here and now, the tangibleness of living, the immediacy of love.

Darry rested a hand against his back, felt the jut of his spine. Soda leaned into the touch. Eighteen and fourteen. Soda was so very young. 

So was Darry.

“Wanna know a secret?” Soda asked, voice hidden in Darry’s shirt.

“Anything.”

“I’m scared you’re gonna leave,” Soda whispered. “I’m scared you’re gonna leave, and never come back.”

Darry didn’t know what to say. Only a few weeks lingered between him and graduation, and after that, the future was a wide open door. Scholarships, college, a career—who knows. He could be anything, anybody. Soda’s words pierced through skin and muscle, straight down to the heart, but Darry didn’t know what else to do. He wasn’t born with Soda’s contentment. He had to leave Tulsa, or he might just go crazy.

The road was right there. Tantalizing. Seductive. Come graduation, Darry was gonna get out, and nobody could stop him, nobody could make him stay. Not even his brothers.

Headlights traced foreign patterns through the window, fracturing the darkness. His parents were home.

Chapter Text

Darry is twenty now.

The world ended quietly, late at night, and without witnesses. No fanfare heralded its destruction, no prophecy or portend, no warning. Just headlights and a whistle scream. Rain. Broken glass.

The world ended on a Tulsa train track.

Darry was twenty, and his future ended with it.

-

The thing is, no one teaches you how to do anything when you’re twenty. Adults said you’re young—you had time to mess up and make something of yourself. But not Darry. He ran out of time the moment his parents got into that car and slammed the doors shut, the echo reverberating up his spine.

The preacher came to him after the funeral, shook his hand real firm, said “Parenthood is a big responsibility, son,” and Darry had no response because why were they talking about parenthood? Darry’s parents lay side by side in wooden boxes, six feet under his shoes.

The state came around the next day. Bright and early, no warning. Some prudish woman with clenched lips who wanted to poke around the house, wanted to open drawers and wrinkle her nose at what she found. She skirted the big brown stain on the carpet where ten-year-old Soda spilled a glass of chocolate milk, stared it down like a psychic reading the past. She frowned at the mess of laundry in the hamper; the dishes in the sink; Darry, tousle-haired and half-dressed, his shirt untucked, stained blue jeans and wrinkled flannel.

“Do better,” she said, “much better. Show us a stable income. Food in the fridge. No rumors of gang activity—” she eyed his pocket, the sharp outline of a switchblade— “no fighting, no police record. Stay out of trouble, and we might let you keep the boys.”

Might let you keep them, as if he were a kid begging his parents for a puppy.

Her heels clicked on the cement steps. Pausing by the gate, she turned for one last look. The old house, porch roof sagging, mildew and mold. Tires abandoned to the weeds. The busted gate. Her gaze darted over Darry as if he were just another fixture of it all, an accessory to poverty. He might as well be the broken porch swing. He might as well be nothing at all.

Greaser— the insult spoken with her eyes, clearer than saying it aloud.

“Who was that?” Soda in the hall, no pants, one of their dad’s enormous shirts swallowing his bony frame. He rubbed exhaustion from swollen eyes. Darry wondered if he cried himself to sleep.

The sleek black car turned out of the driveway in a cloud of dust. Darry leaned against the door frame and watched it go. “Nobody special. Go back to bed.”

“They’re gonna take us away, ain’t they.” Soda brushed against Darry’s elbow. “I heard her talkin’.”

Crusty hair stuck to his forehead, remnants of grease he tried and failed to wash out for the funeral. We look like hoods, Darry thought, bile on his tongue. Lord help us, we look like hoods.

Lean arms slipped around Darry’s waist. Darry let himself be hugged—because Soda trembled, and because Darry hadn’t felt anything in four days, and because some woman in a pristine pencil skirt just threatened to take these brothers out of his arms forever. Until the moment he opened the door to that scowling face, he’d never considered the possibility that he might lose the other half of his family within days of burying the first. Custody. What a strange word. What heavy implications.

“Nobody’s taking you away,” he said, toneless. Soda hugged him tighter. “I’m not gonna let them.”

-

An envelope hid in Darry’s bedside drawer. Wrinkled from being opened and unfolded a thousand times, each letter learned by heart, like a mantra, like a liturgy. He recited those words in the darkness of his room. He whispered them to himself as he took the letter to the kitchen and read the faded print one last time, touched his lips to the return address. A benediction. A surrender.

The garbage went out early the next morning. Darry didn’t watch Soda haul it to the gate. The truck came, the bags loaded up, fumes of exhaust. Darry kept his back to the window and his eyes firmly fixed on reality. The future inside that envelope, the one with a fancy college letterhead, was meant for another Darrel Curtis, one who’d been dealt a different hand in life. This Darrel Curtis stood in the kitchen of his childhood home, facing down a full sink of dishes.

The front door slammed. Soda, back from taking out the trash. Squeaking floorboards in the hall, the creak of hinges, Soda’s lowered voice murmuring to Ponyboy. Darry closed his eyes and breathed in the stillness. No battle warring in his mind. No resentment.

“Good morning,” Soda said, nudging Darry as he entered the kitchen. Ponyboy followed behind, bare feet and bed-head.

No other choice existed besides this one.

-

After the funeral, Ponyboy stopped talking. Three days passed without a word. He glided through the house like a phantom set adrift, no purpose, no mooring. Darry snapped his fingers in front of Ponyboy’s face, but Pony didn’t flinch. He just stared. Brow furrowed. Face blank. A walking ghost.

“I think he needs a doctor,” Darry told Soda that night as they shared a smoke on the back steps. Darry usually never smoked, too much of an athlete, but tonight he fidgeted with the cigarette when Soda handed it back to him. Ponyboy’s eyes hung suspended in his memory. Wide and sightless, the trace of tears caught in his eye lashes.

Soda hummed. “No doctor’s gonna fix what’s wrong with him.”

“We gotta do something. He can’t stay like this forever, not with the state sniffing at our doorstep. He’s got school and—”

“You gotta let him mourn, Dar.” Soda touched Darry’s knee, and all the fight drained out of him, seeping into a puddle beneath the steps. “Let yourself mourn.”

Darry snorted. How could anyone find time to mourn when life careened forward, never pausing, never waiting to let you catch your breath or tie your shoes? Darry had gone to his dad’s old job that morning, talked to the foreman and got hired on the spot. “You’re strong,” the man said, patting Darry’s shoulder with leathery hands, misshapen and ugly. “You’ll do.”

He fished his dad’s work boots from the closet. Found the worn gloves, pressed them to his nose and smelled leather and sweat. This is my future, he thought, panic in his throat, a cold lump he couldn’t swallow. This was it, everything he was and could’ve been, reduced to the strength of his hands.

“Darry,” Soda said now, as if coaxing a scared cat into the light. His face turned upward, moonlight dripping off his nose and eyelashes, unfathomable optimism coating his tongue. The sound was unbearable. The silence, worse. “We’re gonna be okay.”

Darry lifted the cigarette to his lips. No other choice existed besides this one. So he turned his eyes forward and squared his shoulders. Take it like a man. Face the work head on, unflinching—like a punch, like a gutting, like headlights and a train. Stare down the barrel of the gun between his eyes. Spit out the bullet, walk it off. Take it. Take it. Take it.

We’re gonna be okay.

No other choice besides this one.

-

In the end, Soda brought Ponyboy back to himself.

Darry spent days prodding at the kid, intermittently pleading and demanding, begging him to eat his dinner, shouting at him to look at them, look at something, wake up, wake up, wake up. Growing up, Darry and Ponyboy had always been at odds—the age difference was too great, their personalities too conflicting. Now, Ponyboy turned so far inward, Darry couldn’t find him anymore.

“You gotta go back to school, Ponyboy,” Darry said, kneeling on the carpet, gripping Pony’s knee. “Do you wanna get thrown in a boys’ home?”

The scratch of pencil against paper never faltered. Ponyboy’s eyes stayed glued to the notebook in his lap, the margins overflowing with a week’s worth of horse doodles.

Frustration simmered under Darry’s skin, helplessness and fear, a grenade. “Do you know what happens in those places?” He snatched the notebook out of his brother’s hands and tossed it aside. “You fool enough to think you’ll be better off?”

For a moment, Ponyboy’s eyes flashed—a glimmer of that toddler, so many years behind them, who tattled at the slightest offense. But the spark cooled as quickly as it came. He picked up his notebook and kept drawing.

Darry sank back on his heels. Look at me, he wanted to scream. Yell back! Such powerlessness as Darry had never felt before, now the only constant in his life. No rulebook existed that could help him; he needed to talk to his dad. He needed someone, anyone, to translate the hazy film in Ponyboy’s eyes.

Soda sauntered into the living room and something about his presence eased the pressure in Darry’s chest, like a whisper of fresh air. One hand on Darry’s shoulder, barely a brush of fingers, and the other in Ponyboy’s hair as he leaned over the kid, inspecting his drawings.

“Cool,” he said, as if it were just another hum-drum moment in their lives, and pointed at a rearing buckskin. “I dig that one.”

Since the funeral, Soda had thrown himself into life with a gusto not even Darry could match. The shadow of death hung thick in the house, touching everything from the leaks in the roof to the haunted look in Ponyboy’s eyes, but Soda existed in stark defiance of grief. His infectious enthusiasm remained their one constant. Like a tether to before , carefully preserved in the shrine of his smile, his eyes, his boisterous voice. In the rare moments when Darry wasn’t consumed with resentment for the world, he loved Soda for it.

Now, Soda grabbed Ponyboy by the elbows and hauled him to his feet. “C’mon, you gotta see what I did to the mashed potatoes.”

Pony followed him into the kitchen like a puppy on a leash. Darry too, though he hung back, leaning against the door frame. Soda chattered idly as he shoved a bowl of blue glop into Ponyboy’s arms.

“I’m a genius,” he said, beaming.

Darry wrinkled his nose. “The hell?”

“No, the mashed potatoes.”

Ponyboy stared at the bowl in his hands.

“Food dye!” Soda brandished a spatula at them like a professor behind a podium. “Why should desserts get all the fun?”

Darry took the bowl out of Ponyboy’s hands. “That’s enough kitchen time for you, little buddy.”

“Wait ‘til you see the chicken!”

“Let me guess, it’s purple?”

“Green!” Soda lunged at Darry in an attempt to reclaim his artistic disaster, but Darry held the bowl over his head with one hand and stiff-armed Soda with the other. His brother was sixteen, lean-built and scrappy as a cat, but Darry could make anyone seem small. Soda flailed, still holding the spatula covered in mashed potatoes. Blue glop sprayed the kitchen as Darry wrestled the spatula out of Soda’s sweaty grip.

“You can’t stop me,” Soda panted, finally trapped in a headlock. Mashed potatoes decorated his hair. “You’re just jealous ‘cause I’m so smart.”

And Ponyboy laughed.

Their home held the memory of laughter like a smell buried deep in the walls; one of the many childhood stains, the scratches in plaster and wood. Yet now the sound had become a stranger. Darry couldn’t remember how laughter tasted, the sickly sweetness in his mouth. But Ponyboy, hunched over himself in the kitchen, small and skinny and splattered in blue mashed potatoes—he laughed. And when he finished laughing, hung his head and sobbed.

Soda wriggled out of Darry’s grip. He took Ponyboy in his arms— “There you are—” like this was the most natural thing in the world, like a visitor he’d expected, and squeezed tight. “Let it out.”

Ponyboy wrapped his arms around Soda’s middle and they sank to the floor, a shaking, weeping huddle. Ponyboy wailed into Soda’s neck. Soda held him.

Darry stepped back. Relief carved a path through his stomach even as a strange ache settled. There was Ponyboy taking big, gulping breaths, “You smell weird,” mumbled tearfully into Soda’s shoulder, and Soda smiling while petting his hair because this, at last, was normal. This, at last, was their annoying thirteen-year-old brother with runny nose and petulant words, finally clawing free of his own mind.

They looked so natural, clinging to each other in tears and snot and wet laughter. Standing in the doorway, his shadow blocking the light, Darry might as well not be there at all.

-

Roofing was hard labor. Honest, but hard.

Darry grew up playing football. Late nights in the lot, throwing so hard his arms might fall off, body at full throttle until he got laid out in the dirt. He was a kid from the East Side. He fought dirty, switchblade ever present in his pocket with the outline of a warning. Once, he almost got mugged—some hood saw a teenager with a bag of groceries and took him for an easy target. In the end, the guy crawled away with a broken arm.

Darry wasn’t a kid anymore, but he would always be from the East Side, and he knew the score. Born a grease, with grease in his veins and blood on his knuckles. He took beatings and gave them in return. He punched guys who called his brother names, socked Tim Shepherd in the mouth for pulling a blade on Two-Bit, got hit in the face with a piece of pipe only to get back up and lay out the guy who did it. Pain was no stranger; only an old friend, ever knocking at his door.

But this was different, the soul-deep exhaustion settling in his bones as he trudged the few short steps from car to porch, every muscle a raw nerve, every step a test of willpower. Today, he climbed ladders until the rungs felt more familiar than earth beneath his feet. His hands cramped from holding the hammer so long, blisters and calluses, splinters. Everything hurt. His feet. His back. His mind.

Warmth spilled across the porch as he pushed the door open. The pocket of light tugged him inside. He reached for his shoes, only to groan as tongues of fire forked up his back.

Slender fingers replaced his own. “You look beat.” Soda, kneeling at his feet, face lifted.

Too tired to fight as his kid brother undid his boot laces, Darry leaned against the wall. “Why are you still up?”

“Why are you so late?”

Darry ignored the question and kicked off his boots. The couch was too far; the carpet, close enough. He sank down flat on the living room floor, pressed his face into the rug and groaned. Tension coiled in his shoulders.

“You work too hard,” came Soda’s voice from above. Darry opened his mouth to respond. No words came out.

Cool hands stroked the aching curve of his back. Gentle as a mother’s prayer, but strong, too, pressing and kneading until Darry could cry right there, tears soaked up in the carpet.

“I can’t sleep when you’re gone,” Soda admitted. “The house is too empty.”

Soda’s hands were strong; his voice, a spoken lullaby. Darry heard his mother in every word, felt her touch in the patterns rubbed into his skin, so familiar, as if she were right there. Maybe she is, he thought, his mind slurring with exhaustion—wasn’t that her golden hair, hovering over him? Her smile, the gentleness of her eyes?

She used to tuck him in at night. She used to sit beside him until he fell asleep, stroking his hair and crooning the monsters away. Sometimes dad sat beside her, and in the shadow of their presence, the bed dipping beneath shared weight, fear had no power.

“Mom,” Darry mumbled. Silence swallowed the name. The touch at his back hesitated, and he croaked in desperation because no, keep going, don’t stop, don’t leave me. “I’m so tired.”

“I’ll stay with you,” said that familiar voice, that memory of kindness. “You can sleep.”

So he did, stretched out on the floor. And when he woke, covered with a blanket, Soda sat on the floor beside him, looking like he hadn’t slept at all.

-

Darry worried about Ponyboy. The kid got spacey after their parents died, weird in a way he never used to be. He was back to talking, and giving Darry lip over everything. But he also zoned out, forgot things, stared right through you. It gave Darry the creeps. Soda didn’t say it, but it creeped him out, too.

“Go easy on him,” Soda said, but Darry was scared. He was scared that one day Pony would zone out and never come back.

-

Soda burst through the door one evening with dirt on his nose and a grin on his lips. “You know the DX station where Steve works?” He punched Darry’s shoulder. “Got me a job.”

Darry straightened and rolled the kink from his neck. He’d spent the better part of an hour hunched over Ponyboy’s homework, strewn across the kitchen table like a papery feast. “They had another part-time opening?”

Soda drummed his fingers against the table. Measured, restrained. Darry narrowed his eyes. Soda wasn’t made for stillness, anymore than birds were made for the ground. Unlike Ponyboy, who lived in a perpetual state of silent reflection, Soda’s quietness only meant two things: he was hiding something, or about to give Darry a migraine the size of Texas. Usually both.

“Nah,” he said now, “not part-time.”

“ Full-time? With school—”

Soda groaned. “Don’t make me spell it out, man, we know I suck at that.”

Darry sat back. The clock ticked, the only break in the silence between them. Soda met Darry’s gaze head on, fierce, shoulders squared like he was ready to rumble. “We need the money, Dar.”

“How much is the pay?” he asked, and hated himself even as the words left his mouth.

“More than I make sitting at a dumb desk all day.”

Darry remembered when Soda first started high school, and his weekly visits to the principal’s office; the welts on his hands from frustrated teachers; the salt-dried water marks dotting his homework. Darry spent two years helping Soda with his homework. Two long, painstaking years of misery and nonexistent progress.

“I ain’t going back,” Soda said. Steady voice, but with hunched shoulders, waiting for the blow to fall. Like he thought Darry would be disappointed in him. As if Darry were capable of feeling anything but wrung out. He did his damnedest for this kid brother, and in the end, it didn’t matter, any of it. Soda would drop out. He was always going to drop out. This end was as inevitable as the grease in his hair and the stains on his jeans. Nothing but Tulsa trash, written right there on his pedigree. Dust and oil. Power lines. Poverty.

What would their mother say?

“Okay,” Darry said, with the ghost of his mother’s disapproval draped heavy over his shoulders.

Soda exhaled. “Okay.”

They never talked about it again. They didn’t need to. Darry wasn’t gonna fight over it—he knew Soda would stay in school if he asked, and that would be worse than dropping out. Soda’s misery hung thick as a blind fog, and Darry couldn’t bear it. 

Besides, they needed the money.

(No other choice besides this one.)

Another Curtis stuck in Tulsa, Darry thought, shuffling the loose pages of Pony’s homework. Wasted potential, all of them. Darry could’ve gone far, if given the chance, and so could Soda. But Soda never even gave himself that much, never even considered a life outside of the one he lived. Wasted potential. Wasted, wasted, wasted.

“I’m going out with Johnny,” Ponyboy said, emerging from his bedroom.

“No you ain’t.” Darry shoved a heap of books and schoolwork into his arms. He stumbled beneath the weight. “You’re going back into that room to study until these pages don’t look like a three-year-old scribbled in ‘em.”

Ponyboy griped at him. Not fair, and I already studied, and this ain’t a prison. Darry closed his ears to it.

One of them would get out of Tulsa. One of them would breathe the free air of a future. Darry would be damned if he didn’t make it happen. The kid was smart. That intellect could take him places, if he set his mind to something bigger than grease.

Ponyboy Curtis wasn’t going to end up like his big brothers.

Darry wouldn’t let him.

-

When the nightmares began, Darry thought someone had broken into the house. Ponyboy’s screams reverberated through the halls, strong enough to rattle the plaster. Darry never moved so fast in his life. Half-dressed, his father’s gun in hand, he burst into Ponyboy’s room only to find his baby brother trembling under the covers.

“Who’s dyin’?” Soda yelled as he skidded through the door behind Darry. Then, going waxy white, scrambled for Ponyboy and held him in a vice-grip until the screaming stopped.

In the morning, Ponyboy didn’t remember what he dreamed about. He didn’t remember dreaming at all. And he didn’t remember the next night, or the night after, or every night since, no matter how loudly he cried or how long it took Soda to calm him afterward.

The nightmares were a rumble Darry found himself powerless to fight. He force fed the kid tea before bed, made him run laps until he was too wrung out to think, gave him aspirin and painkillers and every kind of medicine he could dig up. None of it worked. Eventually, in sleep-deprived panic, he called their doctor down to the house. The stooped old codger listened to Ponyboy’s heartbeat, shone a light in his eyes, asked question after question Pony had no answer to—but in the end, left without verdict.

“Make him exercise,” was all the doctor said, as if Darry hadn’t already tried that, as if he wasn’t losing his mind because nothing worked .

Every night, Ponyboy begged for Soda until he burst through the door. Every night, Darry stood back while Soda soothed him. Every night, Darry waited for Ponyboy to ask for him too.

Ponyboy never did.

Soda didn’t say anything. But one night, he moved into Ponyboy’s room. No warning, no asking Darry’s opinion. Just up and did it. He dumped his clothes on the floor in Ponyboy’s closet, added an extra pillow to the bed, and made himself comfortable under Ponyboy’s covers. That night, the house stayed silent. Ponyboy slept peacefully until dawn.

As Darry peered at them through the cracked door—Soda’s arms flung haphazardly over Ponyboy, with the blanket tangled between their legs, chests rising and falling in perfect harmony—a small seed of resentment festered. Darry had spent days tearing himself apart trying to help Ponyboy. He’d worked extra shifts to pay for the doctor, hauled timber until his hands bled inside his gloves, his back a symphony of pain. All of it without purpose.

In the end, Soda did nothing but exist. That was cure enough.

(Darry wondered, sometimes, what would happen if he also snuck into that bed. If his brothers curled up beside him, inhaling the silence and breathing life into it, with Soda’s strong little heartbeat pressed to Darry’s chest—he wondered if he, too, would cease to dream.)

-

Darry asked Ponyboy to do the dishes, but dishes still filled the sink. He asked Soda to vacuum. Crumbs still littered the floor. They paid the mortgage with Soda’s first paycheck, but came up short on the water bill. Darry phoned the company to beg for an extension. This ain’t a charity, the guy on the phone said. I dunno what to tell you, buddy.

Darry stared at his hands, callused and misshapen, sandpaper rough. Yesterday, a coworker asked if the kid who dropped him off—Sodapop, revving the engine, waving like a lunatic—was his son. He looked in the mirror and an old man stared back. Twenty years old. Darry couldn’t remember what it felt like to not worry about the next meal because someone older than him had it taken care of. He watched Soda’s new girlfriend, Sandy (nice enough, if a bit flighty) and tried to remember what it was like to date and kiss and make love, the whole future in the palm of your hand.

Ladder. Beam. Sky. Take the nail, pound it in. Arms and neck, aching in the sun. Sweat. Heat. The stink of men. His whole life laid out on the roof of a house he’d never be rich enough to own.

Darry hadn’t been a kid in months. He’d never be a kid again.

“I asked you to do the dishes,” he said, looking between the sink and Ponyboy, who huddled in a pile of books on the floor. “You don’t listen to a thing I say.”

Ponyboy gripped the book tighter. Darry read it in his eyes— you’re not my dad, said every furrowed line in his face, the resentment in his eyes. Darry slammed the cupboard door. Bang, like a gunshot. Ponyboy flinched.

“Just wash the damn dishes,” he yelled. Too loud. Echoing. Reverberating through his skull, matching the tempo of his feet as he stormed out.

Sheltered in the sanctity of the living room, Darry heard the sink turn on, the clink of cups and plates. He breathed in deep. Everything ached.

“Go easy on him.”

Darry startled. Wrapped in his frustration and aching back, he hadn’t noticed Soda sitting on the floor, in front of a silent TV. No cartoons. Just the screen, empty and black.

“I’m gonna do what I damn well please,” Darry said. “You’re too soft on the kid.”

Soda chewed his lip until a faint streak of red stained his teeth. They listened to the violent crash of dishes.

“Water’s back on,” Soda noted.

Darry sank into the recliner. Soda scooted over, still on the floor, and gently pressed the side of his face against Darry’s knee. They sat together in silence, listening to Ponyboy wash dishes with water Darry worked an extra shift for.

-

Sometimes, on Darry’s rare off days, they played football in the lot. Darry and his brothers, Two-Bit and little Johnny Cade, Steve attached to Soda’s side, Dallas Winston. Their shoes bit into dead grass and churned the lot to mud. Sliding, hollering, arms in each other’s sides, dirt on their faces. Football never changed. Darry was twelve, with passion rippling under his skin, and now twenty, knocking Steve flat and chucking the ball to Johnny. This, at least, still simmered iron hot in his blood.

“Muscles is on a roll today,” Dally sniped, as Darry spit grass and mud from a particularly vicious tackle. (Two-Bit still lay groaning in the dirt.) “Gotta wonder what it takes to bring you down?”

Darry rolled his shoulders— “Wanna try?” and sent Dallas flying into the mud.

-

Dallas stopped coming around. Just up and vanished one day, no warning, no goodbye. That Winston kid had it coming, they murmured in town, it’s about time he got busted.

Rumors grew wings and flew unrestrained. He shot up a bank, they said. He robbed a charity. He threatened ancient Mrs. Coppe with that knife of his, always at the ready in his back pocket.

“Who cares?” Tim Shepherd only shrugged when Darry presses him on it. “They were gonna get him for something. Don’t matter what.”

Hood. JD. Dirty, no good greaser.

Darry took an hour off work unpaid, drove around to reformatory school and the local prison, talked to some cops. County lock-up, they told him. And that’s where he finally found Dallas Winston. County lock-up.

“What, you worried?” Dallas asked, through the thin sheet of glass between them. He grinned, vicious and fanged, while rattling his handcuffs. “No sweat, Superman. I’ve gone worse places on purpose.”

Dark circles ringed his eyes. Darry wondered if they were feeding him enough.

-

“I don’t get why Pony hates me,” Darry said. “What more do I gotta do for the kid, buy him a diamond ring?”

Soda ducked out from under the truck’s hood with oil smeared across his nose. “Pony don’t hate you, man. He’s just having a tough time.”

“Well shoot.” Darry tossed Soda a rag. “Man, if only we could all mope around and forget our chores just ‘cause some train driver had crap eyesight, wouldn’t that be swell?”

Soda flinched. Wiping his hands, he slammed the hood of the truck, eyes downcast. He could take jabs as well as any of them, and dished them out, too—vile words paired with a grin—but not about their parents. Never about their parents.

Darry groaned. “I didn’t mean it like that, buddy,” he said, ruffling Soda’s hair. “I’m just talkin’ stupid.”

“That’s my job,” said Soda. He chucked the rag at Darry’s face, and a moment later, himself—barreled headfirst into Darry’s chest, all elbows and knees. He might as well have collided with a brick wall, but Darry let himself be taken down, and dropped with the impact.

They wrestled in the dirt, skinned their elbows and ripped new holes in their jeans. Soda made up for his smaller frame with quickness. Darry made up for his lack of agility with brute force. When they used to fight in rumbles (past-tense, in that time before the woman in the pencil-skirt haunted them with threats of police records and boys’ homes), Darry liked when Soda fought at his back. They filled in the gaps of each other’s weakness. When Darry wasn’t quick enough, Soda took up the slack. When someone had Soda pinned, Darry broke their arm. Simple.

When they wrestled each other, that harmony remained. Perfectly matched—speed and power, lean lines and blunt build, jabs and headlocks, taunting mockery and deadly focus. Soda rammed his knee into Darry’s stomach. Darry tossed him into the grass like a sack of flour. They rolled, over and over.

Finally, Darry wrangled Soda down and sat on his chest. Wheezing, laughing, with dirt in his teeth, Soda beamed towards the sky. “One day I’m gonna win.”

Darry huffed. “Keep dreamin’, little buddy.”

Suddenly tired, he flopped on top of Soda. The extra weight punched the breath from his brother, a soft oomph gasped into the stillness. The sun beat down to fry them in their own sweat. Dirt and grease. Cicadas humming. The stink of boy.

“Ponyboy’s just a kid,” Soda murmured sticky against Darry’s shoulder. He smelled like gasoline. “You should give him a break.”

Darry rolled over, onto his back. “He’s gotta grow up, Soda. He can’t stay innocent forever, not in our world.”

“I know. But—” Soda chewed his lip until blood stained the corners of his mouth— “not yet. He’s not ready, not yet.”

Darry snorted. More like Soda wasn’t ready for anything that pushed his brothers beyond the stifling confines of childhood. If Soda could keep them here forever, trapped in their little house, he would.

Movement caught the corner of Darry’s eye. Pony’s shadow in the door, a vague outline behind the screen. Watching. How long? The whole time, Darry suspected—he was always on the fringes of their interactions, always observing but never participating. Not with Darry, anyway. Never with Darry.

“Horseboy!” Soda yelled, vaulting to his feet. A moment later he’d cleared both the yard and porch, threw open the door and dragged Ponyboy out. Darry sat back as they grappled where he and Soda had only moments before. This time, both of them laughed. This time, Soda won.

Give him a break. Darry didn’t know why Soda stuck up for Ponyboy so much. He wished, just once, Soda would take his side, tell Ponyboy to give him a break.

“Score one for the Tulsa cowboy,” Soda whooped as he dragged Ponyboy through their yard by the legs. “I roped me a wild mustang!”

They were fourteen and sixteen. Darry couldn’t remember being a child.

“Hey!” A greasy rag smacked Darry in the face. Soda cackled as he sprinted away, Ponyboy in tow. “They got a loose bull at this rodeo!”

They were sixteen and twenty. Soda was the only person who could remind Darry he was still young.

-

“I think I’m in love with Sandy.”

Darry, sprawled face down on the living room floor, only grunted. Love seemed a big word for Soda’s fledgling relationship, but then, he was a big person. Incapable of doing anything halfway, Soda romanced the same way he rode a horse or raced a car. He was a lightning rod, a cyclone, untamed, all-consuming, falling hard and falling reckless.

Darry liked Sandy well enough. A flighty little blond thing, freckles and a gap between her front teeth. Not pretty, the way Dally or Two-Bit liked them (all bosom, no brain) but the dancing glimmer in her eyes was its own kind of pretty, a butterfly caught in the light. Soda would fight wars for her, and she would let him. Pure grease, born and bred, right down to the fiber of her bones—but then, so was Soda. So were all of them.

“She’s just so good , y’know?” Soda’s palms dug into Darry’s back. Then, giddy laughter. “I guess you wouldn’t. Hey Dar, can I ask you something?”

Darry nodded without opening his eyes.

“Did you ever, like, not want to do it with a girl you liked?”

Darry opened his eyes.

“I mean, I want to, you’ve no idea” Soda added remorsefully. “Just lookin’ at her is—”

“Soda,” Darry interrupted, “I ain’t explainin’ the birds and the bees.”

A smack to the back of his head. “Shut up, man, I’m not five.”

“Then quit bragging about your sex life.”

Soda fidgeted, hands still pressed to the curve of Darry’s spine, clenching and unclenching the loose fabric of Darry’s shirt. Then, softly, “We don’t got a sex life.”

Something in his tone tugged at Darry, a string at his heart. He rolled onto his side ( it hurts it hurts it hurts) to take the first good good look at his little brother since he got home from work. Soda knelt beside him, with shoulders hunched and head bent, a touch of red burning his cheeks like their mother’s rouge. Abashed, yet still confident. East Side pride.

“I want to do right by her. I want to do things proper, treat her like a lady, not a grease. She deserves that much.”

Darry wondered if Soda even knew what he meant by that.

Letting out a soft breath, Darry took his brother's chin in his hands, guided their eyes to meet. “Be careful, little buddy.”

“What for?”

Darry shrugged. “Girls, they scare easy. ‘Specially when they think you got more love than they’re fit to handle.”

Soda swatted Darry away with a scoff. “Sandy ain’t like that. She loves me back, she said so.” He pushed Darry down again, flat against the carpet, and attacked his back with renewed vigor. “You don’t get it. I love her more than anyone in the world, besides Ponyboy.” A pause. “And you.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“You and me are different,” Soda said, kneading the weary parts of Darry’s shoulders, “we’re pardners, y’know? Like a rodeo team, and Ponyboy’s the calf we gotta lasso.”

The last team Darry was part of abandoned him for sun-swept halls, with futures so bright, they incinerated even the memory of childhood friendships. “ The team has your back,” his coach had said, “through thick and thin, no matter what.” Thick and thin had found Darry with a leaking roof and a pair of mouths to feed. None of his friends came to the funeral.

“I just love her so much,” Soda whispered. Hope filled his voice, the dreams thick and dripping off his tongue. “I wanna do right by her.”

Darry had never thought much about love, and even less that his baby brothers might one day want it. But for a moment, as exhaustion crept through him in that quiet part of the night, Sandy looked an awful lot like one of those bright futures, come to steal another of his boys away.

-

The socs traveled in packs, so many piled together that their mustangs looked fit to burst at the shiny seams. They wore rings. Sometimes, they carried knives. One night, Two-Bit, Steve, and Soda crashed through the front door with blood on their clothes, dirty faces and messed up lips.

“They came outta nowhere,” Two-Bit said as he flung himself onto the couch, shoes and all. “Thought we’d be scared of their pretty little faces.”

“Barely gave us a scratch.” Steve sank down beside him with a grimace, clutching his chest. Then, “Think I busted a rib.”

Soda danced around the living room and punched at the air. His eyes shone feverishly bright, almost drunken, but Darry knew better. “Man, did we show ‘em!”

“Yeah, and now you can show me.” Darry caught him by the back of the shirt and dragged him around to inspect his face. “What, you let ‘em use your nose as target practice?”

“If so, they got lousy aim.” Soda squirmed when Darry prodded at the bruise on his cheek. Dried blood cracked his lips. His eyes, liquid, manic, darted around the room quicker than the stampede of his heartbeat. A revved engine beneath Darry’s hands, all throttle.

“Wish you’d been there,” he said. “You woulda given ‘em a proper lickin’, I bet.”

Darry scrubbed at Soda’s lip with the hem of his sleeve. An eternity had passed since the greasers’ last rumble. Haunted by social workers, the Curtis brothers kept their noses clean and avoided trouble. But the instinct still simmered in Darry’s gut, like a dog bred for fighting. He saw it mirrored in Soda’s glassy eyes. Ecstasy. Violence. The craving for more.

Blood dried on his little brother’s face, and Darry wanted to hurt the socs who did it. He wanted to skin his knuckles on someone’s teeth and get drunk on the thrill crackling through his veins. Anger, ever present, always hidden just beneath his skin. It burned him up from the inside out.

Soda hissed. Fresh blood trickled from his lip—Darry’s scrubbing broke the fragile seal of dried blood.

“Sorry,” Darry muttered.

Soda pressed the back of his hand to his mouth, the crease of his knuckles smeared with red. “It don’t hurt.”

Darry wondered when his brother got so good at lying.

A few weeks later, a yellow corvette followed Darry down the block. He bared his teeth at them. Someone threw a beer bottle. They sped away in a cloud of exhaust, tires screaming on the slick pavement, but not before Darry grabbed a hunk of broken brick and lobbed it at their taillights.

Darry grinned, savage. Let their corvette bear the mark. Let them know that his grudge against the world was bigger than their mansions, let them know that Darrel Curtis was not tame. He’d bash the skull of anyone who tried to mess with him. He’d skin the flesh off the first fool stupid enough to touch his brothers.

-

He got home late from work, every part of him aching, his eyes swollen, grit and dirt in his blood. Soda slept on the couch. A plate of food waited for him in the kitchen, covered with a dish towel. He prodded at his little brother’s shoulder, watched him sigh and stretch like a kitten.

“Why’re you out here?” Darry asked, as Soda blinked up at him, bleary-eyed.

“Waiting for you, idiot.”

-

“You never let me do anything!” Ponyboy glared at Darry from across the living room, his half-finished homework clutched in shaking fists. Venom dripped from his eyes, pooling in the air between them. “I go out with the guys all the time, I dunno why this is different.”

“Because I said so, that’s why.”

Ponyboy stamped his foot, heel digging into the carpet. “You’re bein’ insufferable!”

This week, they’d fought every single day, with more intensity than Darry ever remembered. He didn’t know what crawled up the kid’s rear and died. Ponyboy balked at every word Darry said, from chores to homework, staying in or going out. And now, this. Insufferable.

“Pullin’ out the fancy words, huh?” Darry crossed the distance between them in a single stride, snatched the wadded paper from Pony’s hands and flung it at his feet. “You wanna be smart, then how ‘bout you quit daydreaming your life away? I’m getting calls from your teachers left and right, ‘bout how you’re never paying attention. You might show up to class, but your mind’s a million miles away.”

Ponyboy scoffed. “Ain’t your business if I flunk.”

“Sure, if you wanna end up in a boys’ home.”

“Might as well,” he snapped. “Maybe I’d actually get to do stuff instead of being bossed around every second of my damn life!”

Darry’s hands were in fists, blood pumping lightning hot through his body. He felt the heat in his face, spreading down his throat, tight, searing rage. Ponyboy stared back. Shoulders squared, ready to rumble. Fierce. Fragile. Fourteen.

Darry whirled on his heels and stalked out, down the hall. The door to Soda’s (no, Ponyboy’s) room was closed. He threw it open without knocking, felt the resounding bam in his chest as it slammed into the opposite wall.

Soda, perched cross-legged on the bed, flinched. He had one of those stupid horse magazines spread in front of him, the kind with nothing but pictures. They couldn’t afford a subscription. He nicked them from the convenience store when no one was around.

“I need you.” Darry grabbed his arm. Soda yelped as he was yanked off the bed and dragged down the hall, stumbling over his socked feet. Back in the living room, Darry flung him at Ponyboy.

“You talk some sense into him,” Darry said. “You’re the only one he listens to, anyway.”

Soda stumbled between them like a cornered dog, his eyes wide. He looked to his left (Darry, chest heaving, muscles tight) and then his right (Ponyboy, blinking away angry tears, fists clenched). Then:

“Shoot, you fellas forget how to breathe?”

With Soda in the room, anger drained down through the floorboards. He held out his hand and Ponyboy immediately scurried to his side, wrapping his arms around Soda’s waist and burying his face in his shoulder. Soda raised his eyebrows at Darry. The effects of that easy smile soaked into Darry’s soul and melted the tension away. He unclenched his jaw.

“C’mon, let’s finish that homework,” said Soda as he tugged Pony back down the hall. “Then we’ll go out with the guys.”

They left Darry in silence, the remnants of chatter echoing after them. Soda left the bedroom door ajar. Their voices drifted towards Darry, Ponyboy animated in a way he never heard anymore. Not since that night, not since the rain and lightning and Tulsa train tracks. Soda coaxed out a side of Ponyboy no one else could find.

“I’ll tell you a secret,” Darry heard Soda say, “but you can’t tell nobody, promise?” His voice dropped. Darry strained to pick out the words, but they were too quiet, barely a murmur. Ponyboy giggled.

In the sudden vacancy, Darry looked around the living room. A pair of Soda’s dirty jeans lay draped over the back of the couch. He picked them up, and Ponyboy’s track shirt from the floor, and the pair of mismatched socks wadded under the coffee table. Laughter drifted down the hall again, faint and rowdy. It pried at the corners of his skin, needled into him to chisel at his bones. He was alone out here. Nothing but darkness and anger to keep him company.

-

Ponyboy’s mind had always been a stranger to Darry; they were too far apart in age, too different in interests and temperaments. Darry approached the world through the narrow lens of reality, whereas Ponyboy saw colors his brother couldn’t begin to understand. Time never brought healing, only more harm. Ponyboy looked at Darry expecting to see someone else, and disappointed with who he found instead.

Ponyboy was tough as a leather cord and scrappy to boot, only fourteen but already taking hits older guys would crumble under. Grease all the way, East Side dirt in his blood. He knew the score. Still, when Darry looked at him, he only saw that annoying toddler, the one rushing to tattle at every word from Darry’s lips.

Somewhere down the line, their petulant squabbles turned serious. That train didn’t just kill their parents—it got Darry too, took away any chance of being a big brother, leaving him with this responsibility on his shoulders and anger in his veins. He looked at Pony and saw a baby. Pony looked at him, and saw failure wrapped up in the shadow of their dad, wearing boots too big for his feet. Darry wanted to pry those boots off his skin. He couldn’t.

And Ponyboy loved Soda more than anyone. Their middle brother bridged the gap in the family, the levity they lost and the easy smile they couldn’t muster. While Darry yelled loud and slammed doors, and Ponyboy stomped his feet and glared in icy silence, Soda stood in the middle, a whisper of sunshine in winter. The ghost of their mother’s beauty. The echo of their father’s laugh.

Sometimes, when Darry overheard his brothers snickering in their bedroom, heads turned towards each other as they huddled over Soda’s magazines, he couldn’t help but resent their easy friendship. Darry worked, and worked, and worked, but in the end, it would never be enough. Ponyboy loved Soda more than anyone would ever love Darry, more than life, more than himself—and Darry couldn’t blame him, because Darry did too. And Soda understood Ponyboy in a way Darry couldn’t, no matter how hard he tried to peel back the shutters of his baby brother’s mind, no matter how much he sacrificed to pave a road toward the kid’s future.

Those boys were made of the same stuff, all grit and roses, all dreams. Darry was left with nothing but the dead thorns of reality and a silent bedroom.

-

Sometimes he woke in the dead of night, cold sweat, no memory of a dream. He paced the creaking floorboards until his feet took him to his brothers’ door. They slept curled together, Soda’s arms flung around Ponyboy and holding him tight. Darry stood in the hall, watching. He timed his breathing to match theirs. Inhale. Chests rising. The shuffle of arms. Exhale. A huff, a sigh, a dreaming whimper. In, out. Inhale. Exhale.

Breathe.

Darry stood six feet away. (He was miles apart.) He breathed in the same room as them. (He’d never felt more alone.)

-

Darry is twenty now.

The world ended quietly one night on a Tulsa train track, and ended every day since. The world ended in the morning with chocolate cake for breakfast and a sink never empty. The world ended in the afternoon on a beam twenty feet in the air. The world ended at midnight on the living room carpet, while a brother kneaded away pain with his strong, clever hands.

Darry was twenty when he made that brother cry again.

The rain started mid-afternoon. At first, the roofing crew tried working through it, until the downpour grew so thick they couldn’t see the ground below, and the foreman sent everyone home. Darry tried to keep working—water in his eyes, beams slippery beneath him, the upcoming mortgage payment pressing at the back of his mind—until the foreman got in his face and screamed at him through the wind, “Go home, Curtis, or you won’t be coming back.”

Darry drove home soaked to the skin.

The light hadn’t quite faded when he pulled into the driveway, rain still coming down in grey sheets, hiding the sky. Darry squelched up the front steps. A wave of noise slapped him across the face—the entire gang sprawled across his living room, mud on the floor and shoes on the furniture, Two-Bit singing drunkenly at the top of his lungs and Soda trying to harmonize from the kitchen.

“Superman’s home,” yelled Two-Bit, and prompted a chorus of cheering.

Darry pushed past them. The kitchen ceiling leaked into a tin pail, plink-plink-plinking in time with his heartbeat. He sidestepped a pile of Ponyboy’s forgotten homework, kicked at someone’s discarded shirt, tripped over the phone cord, all while leaving a trail of wet footprints behind him.

“Don’t take a shower,” Ponyboy said when Darry stumbled past, “the drain got plugged again.”

The closed door of his room offered shallow sanctuary from the gang’s commotion. Darry peeled out of his dripping clothes and left them in a wet pile on the floor. He shimmied into a new pair of jeans, the fabric sticking to his damp skin, but couldn’t find a clean shirt—Soda forgot to do the laundry—so he went without.

Back in the kitchen, he tripped over Steve and Soda, who wrestled on the floor. Two-Bit yelled something filthy about his bare chest. Darry flipped him off with one hand while opening the fridge with the other. He surveyed his options: An empty plate where cake used to be, now only crumbs; mashed potatoes filled with soggy chunks; half a package of baloney.

“Pony meant to get groceries,” Soda wheezed, Steve’s arms wrapped tight around his neck. “He forgot.”

Darry let the door slam shut, the noise reverberating through his head. Bills and dirty dishes covered the kitchen table. Plink, plink, plink. A new leak, dripping in a puddle on the floor.

“I’m going out with Johnny,” Ponyboy said, poking his head into the kitchen.

Darry scoffed. “In the rain?”

“Yeah, Dally borrowed Tim Shepherd’s car.”

“Dally drives like a maniac.”

“So does Soda,” Pony countered, and Darry couldn’t argue.

A migraine pulsed at the edge of his temples, ringing with every shout and braying laugh. Soda, now on his feet again, punched playfully at Darry’s arm as he passed. “Shower’s broke.”

Darry shuffled into Pony and Soda’s room, where a mound of forgotten laundry cascaded from the bed. Three shirts sloppily folded, the rest left abandoned when Soda’s hair-thin attention span snagged on something else. Darry pulled a t-shirt over his head. The room was a landfill, clothing and books strewn about, crumbs on the floor, bed half-made.

He turned to go, only to trip (that’s all he did in this house, fall over people and their stuff), barely catching himself on the desk. A shoe box skidded across the floor in an explosion of envelopes. Sighing, Darry crouched to clean up the mess. It was one of Soda’s treasures, this shoe box, stuffed to the brim with every letter and card he’d ever received. Darry didn’t get sentimental like that—he didn’t see the point of words on a page, always sickly sweet, always fake well-wishes and blatant lies. He’d rather get punched in the nose and call it a day.

But Soda ate it up, all that sugar in an envelope, devouring them like they were his last meal. Johnny wrote him a card for his thirteenth birthday (“hapy birth day, yore rely tuf”) and Soda had dissolved into touched sobs. He reread the thing six times before someone finally pried it out of his hands.

Darry could chronicle Soda’s entire life through the notes, cards, and pictures he swept back into the box. There was ten-year-old Ponyboy’s drawing of Mickey Mouse, the rodeo horse. Magazine clippings of scruffy cowboys and long-legged mustangs. Secret notes Steve passed during class, before Soda dropped out. Lipstick-kissed love letters from Sandy.

Darry paused on a birthday card from their dad. He caressed the stupid pun with his thumb, the sloppy, handwritten message. Pepsi-Cola. Dad’s special nickname for his second son.

Darry reached for the last letter from the box, only to stiffen when his fingertips brushed a faded name. Darrel Curtis Jr. The letter was addressed to him. And above his name, the sender: an address more familiar than his own. Gingerly, he lifted the flap to look inside. There was the worn piece of paper, folded and unfolded with religious care. He could recite every single word by heart. In a different life, he’d spent weeks imprinting the ink into his memory.

The door burst open, crashing into the wall. “Mrs. Miller called,” Soda said, bounding in, “I forgot to tell you. She’s coming tomorrow instead of Saturday for the evaluation.”

The words scurried past Darry’s ears. He turned slowly, the letter still in hand. “Where’d you get this?”

Soda froze. “That’s—”

“I know what it is,” Darry snapped. “It’s my college acceptance. Why do you have it?”

Soda closed the door.

Like turning off the radio, the clamor from the rest of the house died. Only the two of them left to fill the space. Darry could hear Soda’s individual breaths—quick, stilted—as Darry waved the envelope between them. “I threw this out six months ago.”

“I took it out of the trash.”

“Shoot, no kiddin’? Here I thought it grew legs and walked itself under your bed.”

Unrepentant, Soda weathered the sarcasm with hands outstretched, like Darry was a scared dog. “I wasn’t trying to be nosy, honest. I thought you chucked it by accident.”

“By accident.” Darry snorted. “And then you stuffed it in your shoe box? By accident?”

A touch, on his elbow. Then his shoulder. Soda’s healing hands that chased away the pain, cool and firm. Darry could count the freckles on his nose. Every single eyelash framing sad, earnest eyes as he pressed close, closer. “I’m sorry,” he said. Normally, the sound of his voice would be enough to calm the beast in Darry’s blood. “You weren’t thinkin’ straight when you threw it out.”

“You got no clue what I was thinking.” Darry pushed Soda away and held the letter upright, like a challenge. He waited for the lunge, the returning bite. But Ponyboy’s scrappy rage didn’t stand across from him. Only Sodapop, too calm beneath the heat.

“I’m sorry,” Soda repeated. “I was stupid.”

The lack of resistance got under Darry’s skin. Groveling apologies were useless; he wanted relief for the itch under his palms, the sting where the scholarship burned. Until he’d pulled it from beneath the bed like some relic of ancient history, he’d forgotten the acrid taste of hope. The flame rekindled with the touch of paper, the memory of wanting something so badly, his chest felt torn apart by the weight.

His body ached from the day’s labor. His hands, misshapen and ugly. Migraine biting at his brain. Grease. Poverty. Bills covering the table. A little brother’s future shoved into his sweaty grip, the burden of brotherhood, of fatherhood, the fear. When was the last time he’d let himself want something? When was the last time he’d thought of anything outside the slow, steady grind of keeping them all afloat?

Plink. Plink. Plink. Rain dripped through the ceiling into a puddle at his feet.

“I never wanted to see this again,” he said, voice shaking. “You had no damn right to keep it.”

“Aw shoot, Dar—” this, soft and wheedling, as Soda lightly punched his arm— “don’t be mad, I didn’t mean nothing by it.”

And normally, Darry would’ve let it go, unable to stay angry with his middle brother before the guilt caught up to him. But something lurked just beneath the regret in Soda’s voice. Darry didn’t pretend to be an understanding man, but he knew a lie when he heard one, even when it hid behind gentle apologies and repentant eyes.

“You ain’t sorry a lick,” Darry said, quiet. They were twenty and sixteen. They were adults in boys’ bodies. They were rage and grief and every missed opportunity to ever pass through the door. “You never wanted me to leave, anyway.”

Soda’s eyes widened.

Soda, who had no dreams outside of Tulsa. Soda, who wanted nothing more than what he already had, who understood everything about Darry except the one thing most important to him. The scholarship, held between them like a shield. Darry’s loss immortalized in a shoe box. Embalmed, just another memory in the grand chronology of Soda’s life, put on display alongside birthday cards and magazine clippings.

Darry shook his head. “This was everything to me.”

“At least we got each other,” Soda whispered, desperate. “A team, remember?”

“Sure, Sodapop.” Darry said, tired. The shower was broken, the ceiling leaked, the dishes were dirty, the mortgage due. He ripped the scholarship in half and tossed it at Soda’s feet. “I ain’t going nowhere.”

Silence followed, so thick Darry could hear his heart knocking against his ribs. Soda stared at him. He remembered how their mother’s face looked in that coffin, all still and white, like a bruised wax doll. Soda looked like that now.

Darry felt sick.

He opened his mouth, anger and exhaustion and guilt brimming on his tongue, but before words could take shape, the door burst open.

“Two-Bit ‘n me are going to the rodeo.” Steve poked his head in, looking for Soda. “You comin’?”

Soda scrubbed hard at his eyes. “It’s raining,” he said faintly.

Steve snorted. “Since when did a little rain keep you from horses?” His glance swiveled between Soda’s fidgeting hands and Darry, glaring behind him. “What’d I miss?”

“Sibling bonding.” And just like that, Soda was back to effortless charm, all smiles. “I’m comin’. See ya, Dar.”

He didn’t meet Darry’s eyes as he followed Steve. The door closed with a click.

-

With the house empty and his headache drowned with aspirin and a glass of water, regret crept in through the leaks in the ceiling. Darry heard the echoes of their argument with every heartbeat. He saw the hurt in Soda’s eyes. The tremble of his lips.

Darry’s anger coiled inside him like a creature on a leash, always tugging at its restraints. Sometimes it broke free, when Pony nagged him, or the socs went after his gang, or Steve was riding his last nerve. But Soda was different. Soda, who beamed light, who made you feel better just by entering the room. They squabbled the same as anyone, all jokes, jabs, and petty annoyance, but anger never slipped its leash when Soda was around.

Still, that stolen letter smoked between them like a stink bomb. He couldn’t understand why Soda did it. Darry made his choice, turned his face away from the future and set his nose to the here and now, the toil of his hands, the care of his brothers. Everything he could’ve become hid beneath that broken seal. Everything he gave up.

He hated that college letter. He hated Soda for keeping it.

The phone rang.

Darry answered, voice gruff. Loud music on the other end, and Two-Bit’s voice, shrill in his ear and yelling at someone who definitely wasn’t Darry. And then, finally— “Boy howdy, I had to fight a cowboy to use this phone, you’ve no idea.”

Darry pressed his palm against his eyes. “Two-Bit, you’re drunk.”

“No! Well, yes, but listen—” indistinct shuffling, then— “I think you need to come get Sodapop.”

The world stopped.

“Listen, man, if you tell him I called you, I’ll—”

“Two-Bit.” Darry ironed his voice into rigid control. “What’s wrong with Soda?”

Two-Bit sighed. “Not a mile outta your place, he made Steve pull over. Got out and puked his guts on the side of the road. Said it was motion sickness, or whatever, but, well. You know.”

Soda could get kicked off a horse violent enough you heard the impact, and get up like nothing happened. He drag raced and drove reckless, his body going ninety miles an hour even when home, speed woven into the core of his being. Soda didn’t get motion sick anymore than birds were afraid to fly.

“He’s acting normal, sorta, but I dunno,” said Two-Bit. “He don’t wanna pet the horses, either. That’s weird, right?”

“Dunno what I’m s’posed to do about it,” Darry said, even as he grabbed the truck key off the hook.

Two-Bit snorted. “You’re superman. The kid goes starry-eyed over you. If you can’t figure it out, ain’t nobody can.”

-

When Darrel Curtis was twelve-years-old, he made his little brother cry. Dirt and sweat on a Sunday afternoon, surrounded by snub-nosed school boys and the seduction of applause, he let cruel words tumble off his tongue. Don’t be such a baby! Nasty. Pointed. Easy as spitting watermelon seeds.

He’d faced his dad afterward—had to look the man in the eyes and confess his cruelty. But he didn’t get in trouble. Dad just gripped his shoulder and said, real gentle, “Hold yourself to your mess-ups, and make ‘em right.”

Darry held himself to his mess-ups for so long, he couldn’t remember where they started or ended, which ones were his fault, or had been inflicted upon him. Every day he stared new ones in the face. Every day, he failed over and over again.

That’s what makes a man, Dar.

Darry wasn’t a man; just a kid wearing boots too big for him.

-

Rain sloshed against the windshield, distorting the glaring rodeo lights as Darry pulled into the drive. He parked by the big pole barn where the show horses were kept, threw his flannel over his head, and ran through the downpour. The side door screeched at his entry. In the few dozen times he’d come here, never once had the hinges been greased. The noise echoed through the building like a doorbell.

The boys clustered together, hanging off a stall door to smoke. They hadn’t been kicked out yet, but it would come soon enough. Soda turned toward the sound of Darry’s approach with a smile fake enough to have been pasted on with glue. It faltered at the sight of his big brother. A cigarette dangled from his lips—Soda only smoked when something in his world was amiss.

Darry didn’t bother with pleasantries. Ignoring Steve’s loud protests, he grabbed Soda’s arm. “Let’s go.”

Back in the truck, nothing but tension between them and rain drumming on the roof, Darry fixed his eyes on the road. The drive wasn’t long, but it felt like an eternity. They didn’t speak. Soda stared obstinately ahead, and Darry too, the remnants of anger and hurt spilling out on the bench between them. The traffic light flashed red. Darry stole a moment to glance beside him. Soda’s tears glowed crimson, like twin tracks of blood on his cheeks. Utterly silent; just the stuttering rise and fall of his chest.

Green again. Darry hit the gas.

They pulled into their driveway. The porch light shone through the rain—Ponyboy must be home from his adventures with Dally and Johnny—but no light in the bedroom window. Soda hadn’t stopped crying. The soft huff of breath filled up the space between them. His hands, clumsy on the door. Rain came in as Soda moved to get out. Darry grabbed him by the belt and pulled him back.

“Close the door,” he said, and Soda did.

Darkness. Rain. The hurt of words that couldn’t be unspoken.

“You’re right,” Soda whispered. “I didn’t want you to leave.”

“I know.”

“But not like this. I didn’t want this.”

“I know that, too.”

“It ain’t fair.”

Darry shook his head. He wasn’t angry, not anymore, not at Sodapop. Tiredness pulled at his voice. “Life never is.”

“If we weren’t holding you back—” Soda’s voice broke, so small in the closeness— “I thought, I dunno, maybe that letter could help, somehow. If you tried for college again. You weren’t thinking when you chucked it.”

Darry sighed. “Ain’t nothing that letter could do for me now.”

“Still,” he persisted, obstinate. “You might need it. If you try again.”

Darry lifted Soda’s chin, rested his big hands on either side of Soda’s face. Soda’s breath hitched, but still, he wouldn’t look at Darry. The sobs came quicker, little wet pants, chasing each other off his lips. His cheeks glistened.

For a moment, Darry held Soda’s face in his hands and watched him cry. Then, “I ain’t ever going to college, Pepsi-Cola. You know that.”

Somehow, dad’s old nickname dealt the final blow. Soda dropped his face into Darry’s palms and sobbed. Incoherent apologies tumbled from his mouth, over and over again. Soda didn’t cry because Darry had yelled at him, or hurt his feelings, or said cruel words. Soda cried for Darry. For the life Darry could’ve had. For the future sacrificed in blood, like a pagan ritual, on those tracks.

Soda’s greatest fear was Darry leaving. And there, in the rusting confessional of the truck cab, he cried because Darry couldn’t.

“Baby,” Darry mumbled, the last trace of anger bleeding away as he clumsily wiped tears off Soda’s face, “you’re breakin’ my heart.”

He wasn’t made for words of comfort, so he dragged Soda across the seat instead. The space was awkward, with the steering wheel digging into Soda’s ribs, but he fit just right beneath Darry’s chin, small and bony. Darry wrapped his arms around him. Soda’s tears left a damp spot over Darry’s heartbeat.

“’m not your baby,” he mumbled, but Darry heard the smile anyway, fragile and wet.

Darry thought of a time so long ago, playing football with his middle school friends and wishing Soda were miles away. He’d called him baby then, too, as an insult. Silly little kid, always getting in the way, always bawling.

Holding him now as he silently shook, all ribs and elbows, Darry would break his own back just to keep that little kid around. Darry would sacrifice a thousand futures to hold his brothers a moment longer.

“It’s what your parents would’ve wanted,” people said, when they found out what Darry did—that envelope, that future. Nobody understood. His parents wouldn’t be proud of the guy he’d become, anger clenched between his teeth, always ready, a knife against bone. Still, he kept going. Every moment leading to this one was a choice he made on his own, all teeth and grit, all stubbornness.

“At least we have each other,” Soda whispered, like he was still trying to convince Darry, like he was trying to convince himself. “And Ponyboy, too. And the guys. We’re a team.”

No other choice existed besides this one.

“You and me,” Darry said. He tucked Soda under his chin. “A team.”

“And Ponyboy.”

“Him too, I guess.”

Laughter, thick and shaky. “You guess?”

“He’s just so—” Darry grimaced— “fourteen.”

Soda buried his face in Darry’s neck and laughed.

-

Later, when the storm quieted and the wet patch on Darry’s t-shirt dried, after Soda drifted to sleep, he carried his brother into the house. Soda was lanky, sixteen and still growing, but Darry made everyone seem small. He liked his brothers like that. So uncomplicated, so gentle. So easy to hold.

Ponyboy snored lightly in the bedroom’s stillness. Darry rested Soda beside him, pulled the covers up and watched them move together in their sleep—like an instinct, Soda’s arms wrapping around his baby brother, Ponyboy nestling into his chest. The same soul split in two.

And then, as Darry left, his foot brushed against the rustle of paper. The envelope, torn in two.

Darry’s own bedroom was silent, with no steady breath or warm bodies to fill the darkness. The mattress dipped beneath him. He breathed. He held the scholarship against his heartbeat.

When Soda broke, the world felt at odds with itself. And when Soda was content, bright and smiling, Darry thought, maybe they could make it. Maybe everything would be alright, after all. He needed Soda to be happy. Darry didn’t think he could keep going if Soda wasn’t.

Still, the restlessness crackled under his skin, never quite at peace. That age old anger, at the world and everything in it. He tapped his fingers against his legs. Cracked his knuckles. Paced. He’d be nice, he would. He’d keep the anger at bay, and stop shouting, and be kinder to Ponyboy, and he wouldn’t make Soda cry again, never ever again, because he needed Soda to be happy, he needed it—

Darry would be the brother his boys wanted.

He would.

(Still, as he slipped under the covers, exhaustion claiming him, the restlessness coiled in his gut, never quite gone. He wasn’t his father. He never, ever would be.)

-

A letter collected dust in Darrel Curtis’s bedside drawer. Once whole, now torn in two jagged pieces. Not so long ago (and also an eternity) he’d tossed that letter in the garbage. He didn’t toss it again. It hid, like a secret shrine, from the prying eyes of his friends. He never opened the drawer. He never touched the letter.

Words rotted in the cage of darkness. Darry rotted with them.

Chapter Text

Then, the night at the drive-in.

Then, the night Ponyboy didn’t come home until hours past curfew, until his brothers stayed up sick with worry, until fear mangled the last shred of compassion left in Darry’s chest, angry and raw, a dog chewing through its leash.

Then: the fight; the shouting; the blow.

Ponyboy ran.

(He never came back.)

-

The first night without Ponyboy was tense, silent. They drove up and down the streets, Soda behind the wheel, Darry’s hands shaking too badly to do anything but rest limp in his lap.

“He’ll come ‘round in the morning,” Soda said, ever hopeful as they pulled back into their driveway. Darry stayed silent—he’d shouted himself out, nothing left but a dry throat, ash and bile. They went in. Darry’s watch said four o’clock. The house was dark, only the kitchen light left burning. He stared at it so long that when he finally blinked, he saw Ponyboy in the afterimage, scared and hurt, palm pressed to a crimson cheek.

“—Dar?”

He blinked again, and this time Soda stood in front of him. Blood stained Soda's teeth where he bit at his lower lip. “What do we do now?”

Darry looked around, searching for someone who could answer. The house ached with loneliness. No parents. No adults to supervise, to tell him what to do. Maybe he should call Two-Bit’s mother. Maybe—

He stumbled toward the phone, only to stop short with the receiver in hand. He didn’t know the Mathews’ number.

Soda’s quavering voice followed after him. “Dar?”

White-knuckled grip on the table. Breathing in, breathing out. Look yourself in the eyes. Face it like a man. Face it.

(Face it.)

“I hit him,” Darry said.

Soda scuffed at the floor. “Yeah.”

“He’s run off.”

“He’ll come back.”

Beautiful, oblivious Sodapop, always seeing the best, only accepting the parts of reality that pleased him. Darry turned, and there was no accusation in Soda’s eyes; only a shadow of hesitation as he hung back. Darry wondered if his brother also replayed the night’s events, Pony and Darry’s fight projected in his memory like a grainy film reel, over and over and over. Darry, hulking with power and terrified rage. Ponyboy, freshly fourteen, skinny as a yardstick, spacey and smart-mouthed, their mama’s baby, their kid brother.

Soda watched Darry with raised eyebrows. Something like pity glimmered in his eyes. It needled at Darry’s tender skin—anger would be justified, anger would be natural, anger would be easier to bear. Soda’s forgiveness was too simple. He gave it so cheap, it no longer had meaning.

“You should be spittin’ mad,” Darry said. “You should hate me.”

Soda picked at his sleeve. “Shoot, Dar, you got enough hate for the both of us.”

Darry stalked forward, grabbed Soda’s fist, and slammed it against his own chest. The pain felt good. It woke him up, snapped him out of the stupor descending like fog in front of his eyes. Over and over, he pounded Soda's fist against his sternum. Soda tried to wriggle free, but he couldn’t match Darry’s power. Darry had always been stronger than his boys, he’d taken pride in it.

(Lord help him, he’d taken pride in it.)

“Lay off!” Soda shouted, loud enough to rattle the walls. He fisted his hand in Darry’s shirt; shook him until Darry finally let go. Then, gentler, “It’s gone and done, Darry. Hittin’ you won’t take it back.”

Darry looked down at Soda. In the half-light, his mother gazed back—big brown eyes, tender and dripping with disappointment. His knees hit the carpet before he even realized he was going down. Soda went with him, still clutching Darry’s shirt with icy fingers. Darry covered them with his own trembling hands, big enough to encase Soda’s fist like a mitten.

“I don’t know what to do.”

“Give him time,” Soda said. He pushed his palm flat against Darry’s chest, as if he could absorb his brother’s erratic pulse into his own heartbeat. “Ponyboy will be back in the morning, wait and see.”

-

In the morning, Darry woke (slumped by the phone) to knocking. On his feet before he could think, he kicked over the chair in his scramble toward the door. Soda half-rose from his place on the couch, rubbing blearily at his eyes, hair sticking out in every direction. “D’you think—”

Darry wrenched open the door. Two policemen stared back.

“Curtis residence?”

And then he was eight months younger, opening the door to darkness and rain and different faces, but the same badge, grim news and a trip to the morgue. He was eight months younger and chucking the contents of his stomach off the edge of the porch as a stony-eyed cop looked on. He was eight months younger and eight months older, with the world falling apart once again.

“Are you Darrel Curtis?” the cop repeated.

“Yes sir.” Darry leaned against the door frame, arms crossed tight so his muscles bulged, a dog making himself bigger in case of threat. “Can I help you?”

They shifted. “There’s been an incident.”

(he’s dead he’s dead he’s dead he’s dead)

“What kind?”

“Is your brother at home?”

“Which one?”

The fuzz gave him one of those looks, the sort meant to make you feel like a little kid. Tulsa trash, stripped down in a single glance. “We’d like to ask some questions, if you can spare a minute.”

“I can spare several,” Darry said as he stepped onto the porch. He closed the door behind him, shutting out Soda’s stricken gaze.

-

Johnny Cade killed a soc.

They found the victim bled out, skin drained of color, stiff as a freshly starched collar in the park fountain. No sober witnesses were present that night; only a handful of buzzed schoolboys who ran, scared witless, home to their mamas. Friends of the deceased. Bob Sheldon. A name that smelled of cologne and bitterness and costly bourbon.

Details were lost in the drunken retelling—some said it happened at two o’clock while others said three, some said Bob initiated the fight while others said he was jumped, some said the killer also had a gun while others said it was just the knife. In the mess of conflicting stories, only two consistent facts emerged.

One: The killer was from the East Side, born and bred, right down to the roots of his grease-drenched hair.

Two: He had an accomplice.

At six twenty-seven o’clock on a Saturday morning, Tulsa police knocked on Darrel Curtis Jr.’s door and asked to speak with his baby brother.

-

After the police came, so did the newspaper, with Ponyboy’s and Johnny’s faces etched in black ink under the headline.

“Man, I hope they see this,” said Soda, crowding against Darry’s side to get a look at the front page. “They look tough.”

Darry dragged his thumb across the picture. They looked like scared little boys. If any of them were to be mixed up in a murder rap, he thought Dally, maybe Steve. Even himself. But Johnny Cade’s eyes stared back at him from the paper, wide as a wild fawn, with Ponyboy beside him. Darry thought the headline might make it real to him; instead, he felt stuck in a dream.

Soda cried when Darry first told him the news, but now he treated the whole thing like a joke—like one of his own knuckle-headed scrapes with the fuzz, resolved with nothing more than sweet-talking and a gorgeous smile.

“Johnny ‘n Pony ain’t killers,” he’d scoffed. “No more than them nuns who gave us Christmas presents when we were little. It’ll all come right, Darry, you’ll see.”

But like a series of bad omens showing up on their doorstep, the newspaper was followed by the woman from the state. She brushed past Darry—just another stain on the carpet—and took Soda into the bedroom. The door closed with a click behind them. Minutes passed. Then, an hour. Darry’s palms began to itch with the phantom feel of Pony’s cheekbone.

When she finally emerged, she sat Darry down in the living room and went over their home life with the sharp-toothed comb of her voice. Picking apart every detail, inspecting Darry until his skin felt scrubbed raw. 

“You might have to defend your custody to a judge,” she told him when she finally rose to leave. “If you still want to keep them, that is. If your little brother isn’t convicted.”

Afterward, when they stood on the porch watching dust clouds billow behind her tires, Soda wouldn’t tell Darry what they’d talked about behind the closed door. “I didn’t tell her nothin’” was all he said. “She ain’t getting jack outta me.”

Darry ruffled his hair. Soda grinned up at him with a tense jaw, his eyes not quite sparkling. Darry could only imagine the questions he’d been asked, the barrage of needling looks and sickly-sweet words. Tell me about your big brother, sweetie. Do you feel unsafe with him, do you feel scared? You can be honest, sweetie, I’m trying to help.

The thing is, Darry wanted to ask the same questions. If he were a braver man, if he were tough enough to stomach the answers: what did Soda witness that night, with all the anger spilling out like gasoline, Ponyboy’s defiance a lit match and Darry’s violence the explosion?

In the end, Darry was a coward, and kept silent.

-

See, once upon a time, Darry and Ponyboy used to get along. Not as well as either of them got along with Soda, but they had their own little bonds, shared like a secret between them. Both were athletic, and in the heyday of Darry’s football career, Ponyboy followed his progress with sycophantic enthusiasm. Darry kept him updated on the scores, the odds, the upcoming matches. Who was in and who was out. And Ponyboy, barely ten, discussed football like a hardened sports commentator, analyzing every detail of Darry’s games over the supper table.

For a few years, Darry thought his little brother might try out for the football team when he reached high school. The weight of Ponyboy’s interest sat nicely in his chest. Soda had no delusion of being an athlete, too easily distracted to ever form the discipline, but Ponyboy could make something of himself, if he tried. He had that sharp focus, when he wasn’t busy daydreaming his life away.

And then, Ponyboy joined the track team instead.

“Can’t blame him for wanting to be different,” dad had said. “Having such remarkable older brothers ain’t easy. I wouldn’t want to live in your shadow, either.”

Darry had laughed, because it was impossible not to when dad looked at you like that, teasing grin and messy hair. Still, it stung like a papercut—not serious pain, but persistent.

Of course, football wasn’t the only thing they bonded over. The age gap was too wide to be buddies, in the way Darry and Soda were buddies; but sometimes they went fishing, or Ponyboy wrestled with Darry after a long day at school, or Darry gave him a bundle of cinema posters found discarded in an alley. In those moments, he felt a sense of understanding, of ownership. Ponyboy was his baby brother. They fought like no one else could fight. They loved like no one else could love. 

The past eight months made strangers of them. Ponyboy looked at Soda like a god come down to earth, and Darry like an enemy invader. How could you fix what was true? Soda was the best part of their lives, and Darry, the pretend parent. Someone had to wrangle Ponyboy, force him through his classes, keep him safe at night and get him out the door in the morning. That someone wasn’t meant to be Darry, but what else could he do?

Ironic, that out of all of them, Ponyboy would end up the jailbird. Darry was perpetually at the end of his rope, always a moment away from breaking someone’s neck. And Soda played fast and loose with the law, unconcerned about the consequences. But Ponyboy was brainy in a way even Darry didn’t understand—soft-spoken when he wasn’t fighting, his eyes like still pools of water, too dark to know the depth. Ponyboy had a shot at life. Darry had sworn to give him one.

Now, Ponyboy’s face occupied wanted posters, and Darry was to blame, as much as if he’d kicked Ponyboy out that night, as much as if he’d stabbed that soc with his own two hands.

-

Darry tried throwing himself back into work, burying his fear beneath the splinters and stink of sweat. The foreman hollered at him “get your mind off your moping, Curtis,” but it didn’t matter, he couldn’t help it anymore—his mind was a million miles away. After, when he drove home, he sprinted into the house, door banging. Soda sat forlornly at the table. Alone.

“He’ll come back,” Soda said doggedly. “He’s gotta.”

They didn’t talk about what would happen if Ponyboy did come back. 

They waited up again. Darry, head in his hands, counting the ticking seconds. Soda pacing the length of the room, back and forth, fingers tapping his arms as he wore a track in the carpet. Silence so thick, you could taste it. Cicadas in the trees outside. The dripping faucet. Plink. Plink. Plink.

“Talk,” Darry said. It came out broken, squeezed from his throat. “Please.”

Soda paused his circuit around the room. “About what?”

“Anything.” He dug his fingers into his arms. “Please, it’s too quiet.”

So Soda talked, his inane chatter filling up the silence. Stories about DX customers, bad jokes, bygone pranks with Steve and Dally, rodeo mishaps. He talked, and for a moment, listening to the soft cadence of his voice, all was well, and Ponyboy slept just down the hall. Soda had a knack for acting like nothing in the world was wrong. He could sit in a burning building and tell jokes while fire curled up around his ears.

Finally, Darry looked at the clock. “You should go to bed,” he said. “You have work.”

Soda lifted his chin. “So do you.”

“I’ll be just another hour,” Darry said. “It’s okay, buddy. Go to bed.”

Soda did, though he paused in the hall. For a moment, Darry felt Soda’s eyes needling beneath his skin. Then his bedroom door closed with a soft click. The living room felt empty without him. Just Darry. Alone with his mind.

He sat by the telephone, head cradled in his calloused hands. Every nerve on fire. Every sense strained, waiting for a call, waiting for the front door to open, for prodigal to return home. The clock ticked. The fridge hummed. Darry’s skull throbbed in chorus with his heartbeat.

He didn’t fully know what drove him to stand, to shuffle down the hall, but in the space between heartbeats, Darry blinked and found himself outside Soda’s door. He would only peek inside. Just to see if Soda had fallen asleep yet—and if not, maybe Darry could lean against the door frame while Soda teased him, until the jokes became too bold, and Darry tackled him and they fell out of bed in a cackling heap of blankets and sheets—and in that imaginary moment, everything would be alright again. His fingers brushed the door knob.

A sound from inside froze Darry where he stood.

Sobs filtered through the cracks in the door. Stifled, but pillows and sheets weren’t enough to muffle the sound of Sodapop Curtis’s heart breaking; sorrow spilled out, wet and gasping, to flood the house.

Darry stumbled backwards until his back hit the wall, and then down, down, sinking to the floor. Soda’s sobbing ebbed at his feet. He thought of that lonely bed, a dip in the middle from the weight of two boys, now half empty. Soda with the covers drawn up around his face. Tear-stained moonlight, silvery slick on his cheeks.

Darry needed to go in. (He needed to fix it.)

He needed to go in.

(He couldn’t fix it.)

Darry sat in the hall until his back ached, until the weeping faded away, until plaster bit against his spine and golden tongues of sunlight spilled over the floor. When Soda finally emerged from his room, Darry had breakfast sizzling on plates. Soda acted up and cracked jokes and nuzzled his head against Darry’s shoulder. Darry didn’t mention the hoarseness of his voice, or the red-rimmed wetness in his eyes. Neither did Soda. 

They didn’t talk about it. They left for work, hands lifted in parting, and they didn’t talk about it.

-

“Dally got hauled into the station,” Soda announced that night, the door banging shut behind him. He kicked off his shoes, one flying under the coffee table, the other hitting the wall with a thud as he careened into the kitchen. Steve followed hot on his heels, already peeling out of his DX shirt.

Darry grunted. “I heard.”

“So! Betcha he knows something.”

“Only if he stops lyin’ long enough to remember what’s true,” Darry said, and put down the second newspaper about Pony and Johnny in favor of grabbing Soda by the back of the shirt. He pressed his fingers to Soda’s cheek; to a new shiner, stark and hideous. Soda winced.

“Socs’s are gettin’ bolder,” he said, matter-of-fact. “I ain’t ever seen ‘em like this, like sick dogs all riled up.”

Steve smacked his palm against the counter. “Johnny shoulda gutted the lot of ‘em.”

“Ain’t just us, either,” Soda said. “They have it out for greasers all over. One of the guys from Shepherd’s outfit came by and told us about it.”

Darry knew all too well. The conflict between opposing sides of the tracks had always been a bomb about to blow. Bob’s death lit the match. Now, Tulsa was at war.

“Tim wants a rumble.” Steve wandered over to the fridge, holding the door open to squint at the bare interior. “If the Shepherds are in, so’m I.”

The words bounced uselessly off the back of Darry’s shoulders, who still had his thumb pressed to the purple stain on Soda’s cheekbone. Soda pushed him away.

“It don’t hurt,” he said. “We gave it back to ‘em twice as good. Hey, what’s for dinner?”

Darry watched him go, tracking the shiner with his eyes as Soda joined Steve by the fridge, and wondered if Ponyboy’s face had also bruised like that.

-

“He’ll come back tonight, just you wait,” Soda said, as their food grew cold between them, with an empty plate by an empty chair. Two-Bit, passed out drunk in the living room. Steve, rummaging through the kitchen cabinets. Soda and Darry, sitting at a table set for three.

They waited. Ponyboy didn’t come back.

-

“Hey, you still got mom ‘n dad’s rings?”

Darry looked up from the stack of bills newly retrieved from the mailbox. His brother leaned against the living room door, twiddling a lit cigarette between his fingers. Illuminated by evening sunlight pouring through the window, with a halo of smoke drifting around his face, he looked like a cherub from a Bible storybook. Gold and roses, except for the careless grin—that was all Lucifer.

“They’re in my dresser,” Darry said, thinking of the package the coroner gave him, everything they’d been able to extract from the crash. Dad’s watch, with shattered glass. One of mom’s earrings. The heels she wore, and her purse, filthy from mud. Two wedding rings of different sizes.

Soda nodded and turned away. “Thanks.”

“You need ‘em?”

“Nah.” He took another puff of smoke and blew it out in a long, slow breath. Then, “How d’you think he did it?”

Darry scratched his jaw. “Who did what?”

“Dad. When he proposed to mom—did he like, do the one-knee thing, or whatever?”

“Beats me,” Darry snorted. “Why? You gonna propose?”

He said it as a joke, but the following silence sent tension racing down his spine. Soda hunched his shoulders, with arms folded tight across his chest. The cigarette glowed ember orange between his fingers. 

Darry would laugh, but it wasn’t funny. He pinched the bridge of his nose. Took a deep breath, let it out, smoothing his voice. “You have ten seconds to drop the punchline.”

Soda shook his head. “I’m gonna ask Sandy to marry me.”

“That’s a lousy joke.”

“Cut it out, man,” he mumbled. “I ain’t playin’ and you know it.”

“You’re sixteen.”

“Almost seventeen, that’s plenty old enough.”

“Old enough for what?” Darry tossed the bills onto the table with a smack he felt from his teeth to his ribs, all the tension coiled tight. “You ain’t got a car, you ain’t even got a decent salary. Where’re you gonna put her, under you and Pony’s bed?”

“We got an extra room,” he said doggedly.

Why, with all the things happening that week, had this made top of Soda’s priority list? With Ponyboy gone, and the state sniffing at their tail, threatening to jail him if he returned, or snatch him from Darry’s custody? Soda too, which would make a tidy end to his fool notion of marriage. Darry scrubbed at his face, digging at the throbbing just behind his eyes.

“You ain’t thinkin’,” he said finally. “What about bills? What about babies?”

Dead silence.

“Sodapop.” He tilted his head, cautious. “What’s this really about?”

Soda’s ears burned cherry-pie red, eyes shifting across the walls, the ceiling, the carpet. “Her parents don’t know yet. Man, they’re gonna kill me.”

Darry hadn’t thought anything else could scare him. But now, faced with a dodgy Soda avoiding his gaze, a cold spike of fear punched straight through his gut. Confusion, too. He remembered a conversation they had, not even two months ago (though it might as well have been an eternity, for all that happened since). Late night confessions and lovesick dreams. Soda, flushed, the same as now, but resolute, sincerity in his eyes, his voice.

“We don’t got a sex life.” That’s what he’d said. Like a fool, Darry believed him. 

“Sandy’s pregnant,” Darry said flatly, and Soda flinched, as if Darry’s words were a fist to the jaw. “I thought you two weren’t—”

“Well we did,” Soda snapped, grinding the cigarette into the ashtray so viciously, it toppled off the side table. Ashes on the carpet. Ashes on his shoes. “She wanted to. Who cares? I’ve banged loads of girls, Sandy’s no different.”

They weren’t blushing church kids. Sex was all around them, as much a part of their world as the violence they ate for breakfast and the poverty sticking to their ribs at night. They grew up with girls like Sylvia, Dally’s hot-n-cold broad, on his arm one day and cheating on him the next. Pleasure had no meaning. It was an initiation, something you did simply to prove you could; you were tuff enough, man enough, desirable enough.

But that night, Soda said he wanted to treat Sandy differently. He wanted to treat her like a lady. Darry wasn’t even sure what that meant, and he doubted Soda did, either. But Sandy was special, always had been. Soda loved her as much as he’d loved any of them. Maybe more, in some ways. And to him—ever one for grand gestures, his heart stuck to his sleeve with glue—treating her differently meant something. He wanted her to feel important, not just a cheap lay.

Darry felt like he was missing an extra detail of the story. A secret, trapped behind the manic intensity in Soda’s voice. But Soda didn’t keep secrets. Not from Darry, at least.

“Buddy—” he began, so out of his depth it was laughable. Soda stared back, arms folded tight, and for a moment, Darry caught a glimpse of Dallas Winston backed into a corner, a wounded dog. 

“I like babies,” Soda muttered, almost to himself. He stalked past Darry, tracking ash across the carpet, his voice low and stubborn. “I love her. I don’t care.”

The walls rattled when he slammed the door.

-

Soda left with Steve that night, their laughter raucous over the scream of tires and exhaust fumes, and didn’t come home until midnight crept toward the early hours of dawn. Darry stayed up. The scene felt eerily reminiscent of the night Ponyboy broke curfew, except Soda came home loud, the way he was about everything, and Darry didn’t fight him.

When it was all said and done, he should be more worried than he was. Sitting in the chair by the telephone, as the first tendrils of daylight reached for his feet, he only felt a cold vacancy in his gut, the absence of fear or feeling. A pity, that Sandy got dragged into their mess; yet another casualty of Darry’s failures. He wondered what would happen to her, when the state took Soda away.

-

Darry went to the station every day on his lunch break and begged for news. Every day, they turned him away. 

“You gotta give me something,” Darry pleaded.

The cold-faced cop behind the desk only shrugged. “Can’t give you what we ain’t got.”

After, he tracked down a freshly-released Dallas Winston at the rodeo barns and busted his face up, for no reason other than it felt expected of him. Dally expected it, at least, almost welcomed it. He licked his teeth when he saw Darry coming, so much like a snake, his tongue might have been forked. They fought, and Darry got his blows in, and Dallas too, until their lips ran bloody, knuckles skinned on teeth, and Darry couldn’t stomach it anymore.

“Whattsa matter, Superman, you lost the nerve?” Dallas taunted, and Darry left him sprawled in the dirt, just to make a point.

He sleep-walked home.

“What’d you go and do?” Soda cried when Darry stumbled through the front door, fluttering around him like some kind of nanny. Soda taped up Darry’s raw knuckles. Pressed his lips to the back of Darry’s bandaged hand like their mom used to do, soft and anxious, trying to kiss it better. Darry stared at the cracked bathroom tiles. He couldn’t look at Soda. He couldn’t look in the mirror and see his dad’s face reflected back at him.

“I’m so tired,” he said.

Soda snorted— “No wonder, you ain’t getting any sleep—” just to pretend he didn’t know what Darry really meant.

-

The socs jumped Two-Bit so bad, he didn’t even need beer to help him pass out, the pain did it for him. The day after, Darry went down to see Tim Shepherd.

“We’re getting some guys together,” Tim said. “Gotta take a stand. Brumley boys are in, so are mine. What about you, Curtis? This started with your guys. They’ll want a piece of the action.”

Darry had nothing left to fight for except pride and an apology. No way of making it up to Ponyboy except busting up the sucker-faced socs who started this. He thought of Two-Bit, breath raspy in his throat as he stretched out on the Curtis couch. He thought of Soda and that faded bruise on his beautiful little face. He thought of Johnny Cade, who never hurt a fly but would bear the scar of those ring-rich fists for the rest of his life.

He thought of the words he said to Ponyboy, and the ones he should’ve, and the ones he might never get another chance to say.

“My guys are in,” he said instead. They shook on it, him and Shepherd. No looking back. No surrender. No retreat.

-

When Darry wasn’t at work, he sat by the telephone for hours on end, waiting for a call that never came. He was checking out of reality, he knew it, going spacey just like Ponyboy after their parents died. He’d lost his anchor point. There was no reason to keep plodding forward, nothing left to fight except pride—and Darry had lost all of that, too.

Soda made dinner. Soda cradled Darry’s shaking hands in his own and forced Darry to hold a plate. Soda chattered, about everything and nothing, the words slipping loose through Darry’s ears like pool water. His voice held a kind of comfort; as long as Soda stood nearby, as long as his voice stayed close, the world remained as it used to be. That’s what Soda was good at—a time capsule of before.

The state wanted to take him away. Their parents were dead, Ponyboy on the run, and now, Darry would lose Soda, too.

“You’re scaring me, Dar,” Soda whispered, crouched beside him on the floor, where he’d been staring at the phone for the past hour. “You need to sleep.”

“I will.” Darry grabbed his hand and held it tight—just for a minute, he pressed it to his chest, felt the warmth of Soda’s pulse harmonize with his own. He was alive, and here, and the state didn’t have him yet. Two thirds of a family. No, not even that. There used to be five of them, filling up this house with laughter. Now, only Darry and Soda huddled on the threadbare carpet. Soda’s warm palm pressed to Darry’s chest, where their heartbeats tangled and reminded Darry they’re alive, they’re alive, they’re alive.

-

“I like kids.” Soda sounded dreamy—Darry could hear his thoughts so clear, he might have said them aloud, fantasies of a blue-eyed girl and her golden-haired babies, laughter sticky sweet in their mouths, the perfect little family. Soda saw the world the way he wanted it to be. Nothing scared him, not like that.

Darry tried to imagine Soda as a dad. The image was comfortingly close to their own father.

 “You know I’ll love any baby that’s yours,” he said, glancing up into his brother's eyes. Then, probing, “if it is yours.”

Gratitude flickered to hurt in the blink of an eye, and then something else, so like a wounded dog, Darry couldn’t stand to keep looking. He ducked his head, and when he lifted it again, Soda was gone. 

 -

That night, he sat outside Soda’s door and purposefully listened to his little brother cry. The sound ate away at him from the inside out, but he forced himself to stay. Like sticking a dog’s nose in its own mess, shame right there in front of him, ears open wide, letting the pain fill him up and overflow. This, his penance.

-

More and more, Darry found himself at his parents’ grave, trousers soaked by the rain-dampened grass as he wondered how it all went wrong.

Their headstones were smooth and cold. Their names, chiseled in stone. He felt the weight of their legacy wrapped around his shoulders, that great and terrible love passed from capable hands to his calloused ones. He couldn’t remember the last thing he said to them; he never thought it would be their final moments together.

“It’s all going to hell,” he whispered, to the weight of their memory. “I lost Pony. I’m gonna lose Soda. I don’t know what to do.”

He needed one more conversation. Just a few more minutes with his dad’s voice championing him forward, his mom’s gentle touch at his back. Just a few more minutes. He needed to hear them again. He needed to say goodbye.

But they wouldn’t look at him the same, he knew that, too. Not after everything he did and failed to do.

Darry lay down on the cool patch of grass, his cheek pressed to the place where earth met stone. “I’m sorry,” he said, with nobody to hear but the ghost of his parents’ disappointment. “You taught me better.”

-

The kitchen light still burned by the time he got home, with Soda replacing him in the vigil by the phone. Soda leapt to his feet the moment Darry walked through the door.

“Where have you been?”

Darry shuffled past without answering. Exhaustion gnawed, ever hungry, at his bones. His little brother trailed after him. Soda, jittery, fingers drumming restless against his jean-clad thighs, picking at the fabric, scratching his arms. Dark circles under his eyes. Sleep, a long-departed friend.

“Go to bed,” Darry told him. “It’s late.”

Soda popped his knuckles one at a time. “It’s just— you were gone so long, an’ I—”

Enveloped in one of Darry’s old t-shirts, bigger than all of him, he wore his fear just as poorly; his body wasn’t built for it, only recklessness. Darry wondered, once again, how he’d survive when Soda was gone.

“Dar, you’re freaking me out.”

They’d been brothers too long for Darry to not recognize the quaver in Soda’s voice. He couldn’t bear that on top of everything else, not Sodapop crying when Darry needed him to breathe the last scraps of light into their final days together. Comfort didn’t come naturally to him, but he reached for Soda anyway—hand outstretched to brush away tears as they fell.

But Soda flinched back before Darry could touch him. He wiped his nose on the back of his wrist and muttered, “’m fine.”

Darry’s hand dropped limply to his side. “I was thinkin’,” he said, “you and Pone might be better off in the boys’ home.”

And Soda stared at him like a wounded creature, stared so long Darry thought he must agree, and didn’t see the fist coming until Soda socked him hard, right in the stomach.

“Don’t say that,” Soda yelled, too loud in the stillness. “Don’t you dare.”

Then he burst into angry sobs. Noisy, tears hot on his cheeks, and stormed away. His bedroom door slammed hard enough to shake the house.

-

When Darry went to bed that night, he tossed under threadbare sheets, around and around again. No matter where he lay, a mattress spring managed to jab him in the ribs. He was all too aware of Soda in the next room over; what he couldn’t hear almost worse than what he could, the silence thicker than soup. Darry used to find comfort in quiet. It meant Ponyboy slept peacefully, with the nightmares held at bay outside the fortress of Soda’s arms. Both objects of Darry’s affection safe on the other side of drywall.

Nothing had been right since Ponyboy ran away. Like the lid to a jar screwed on wrong, off-kilter and leaking, their lives marched forward, exactly as before and yet entirely different. Beneath the shroud of midnight, the house discovered new ways to feel empty. A body without a heartbeat. A bed missing a brother.

Darry’s door creaked open.

He held his breath, afraid he imagined it, but no, Soda’s shadow cut across the dollop of light from the kitchen, left on in case Ponyboy returned. Soda hovered in the doorway. Darry’s shirt hung loose off his bony shoulders.

They were sixteen and twenty. They were children and adults. They were six feet apart. They were a million miles away.

Darry lifted the white flag of his covers— “C’mere, buddy—” and Soda crawled into bed with him.

Silent shuffling followed as Darry moved to make room for him and Soda slotted himself against Darry’s side. They fit together like matching pieces, Soda’s lean body tucked into the curve of Darry’s bulk, cold feet and hands, nose pressed to neck. Darry pulled the blankets over them both. Soda burrowed closer, like a puppy. Tears seeped through Darry’s shirt.

Apologies never came easy to Darry. He didn’t know how to comfort or coddle or make it better, too much a man to find safety in feelings. For the thousandth time, he longed for Ponyboy—the kid understood Soda better than Darry could ever dream, with their whispered secrets and giggling confessions, hidden in the privacy of a shared room. But his youngest brother had disappeared, and his middle brother cried against his shoulder, and in the end, all Darry could do was wrap his arms around Soda and pull him close.

“I’m sorry.” It was the best he could offer. “For all of it.”

Soda said, “Ain’t your fault.”

Darry waited for the punchline but it never came. He laughed anyway. “You’re nuts.”

“No, I mean it. It’s that damn train’s fault.”

“Train didn’t hit Pony.”

“No, and you’ll hafta make it right, but—” Soda blew out a frustrated breath, hair in his eyes. “You ain’t supposed to be so many people at once. It’s doing things to you, making you go crazy.” His voice softened.“Ponyboy ain’t the only one who needs parents.”

Darry closed his eyes. He tried to conjure the version of himself his father had known, the son and brother he used to be. The old Darry, who laughed without hesitation and stood straight-shouldered, unbowed by the weight of time. 

“I don’t think mom and dad would recognize me,” Darry whispered. “Ponyboy sure don’t. Sometimes I don’t, either.”

“Darry, you’re my brother.” Soda reached up and grabbed Darry’s chin, the slide of cold fingers against stubble. “I recognize you.”

Maybe that was enough. 

Soda watched him, eyes glistening in the faint light. “You’re scared.”

“Yeah.” It came out shaky, like a confession; like a giant spring uncoiling in his chest. “You’re all I got left.”

“Ain’t going nowhere,” Soda said. He left it there, hanging. An invitation. Darry took a breath. 

“Me neither.”

Satisfied, Soda collapsed back against his shoulder. Darry listened to their heartbeats, layered atop each other, and thought of all the nights he spent cold and alone, aching to crawl in between his brothers and hear their breath swallow up the darkness. Soda sniffled. Darry wanted to snatch up the sound and bury it far, far away, somewhere sorrow couldn’t reach them. Soda wasn’t made for sadness, the way dogs weren’t made to be kicked. It wasn’t natural.

Then: “Sandy moved to Florida.”

Darry didn’t know what to say. 

“I wrote her a letter,” Soda continued, quiet. “Told her I’d marry her an’ everything. Think she’ll come back?”

Darry ruffled his hair. “Sure, buddy. I dunno why she wouldn’t.”

Soda hummed quietly, deep in his throat. They lay together, with the dark house creaking around them, cold, still. The wet spot grew on Darry’s shoulder. He wrapped his arms around his little brother and held on tight—this, the Curtis boys’ last stand against the darkness, just the two of them, together.

“I miss him,” Soda whispered, muffled against Darry’s shoulder.

“Yeah.” His voice cracked. “I miss him too.”

-

The telephone rang.

-

That night, they found Ponyboy covered in ash, voice so shredded by smoke, it could’ve gone through a grater. Darry clung to him and swore he’d never let go. Soda too, his golden head buried against Darry’s shoulder. Both his boys held tight against his chest, warm and breathing and alive. Tears and snot. Rhythmic pulse. All he ever loved, snug in the cradle of his arms.

That night, Darry pressed his face into Ponyboy’s hair and cried.

Chapter Text

Somehow, life went on.

Darry Curtis was twenty years old and still breathing. Like a dog licking its wounds, ever creeping towards the light, time moved forward and the jagged wound knit back together. He was still breathing. Still fighting. His knuckles bled red while his soul bled grit. And, miraculously, his brothers still slept in the room down the hall.

They almost lost Ponyboy. During that week from hell, when everything went wrong in a thousand different ways, his little brother slipped through the cracks of Darry’s failures and disappeared down the tracks. The one thing Darry had worked so hard to prevent, now caused by his own hands. But in the end Ponyboy came home, scrawnier and dirtier than before, with a haunted look in his eyes he never quite shook, but still, home. And for a moment, both brothers gripped tight in his arms, Darry thought— We’re gonna be okay.

For one blisteringly beautiful moment, they were.

Then, the after. The rumble. Two friends gone in one night. Ponyboy delirious, sick for weeks. Hours of court hearings.

Lord help him, Darry was gonna lose them all—

But Darry Curtis was twenty years old and still breathing. The world didn’t end on train tracks, and it didn’t end under a street light soaked in blood. The world didn’t end in the echo of a slammed gavel. Time moved forward, and Darry thought— We’re gonna be okay.

And for one blisteringly beautiful moment, they were.

Until Soda fell apart.

Darry could fill a book with the amount of times he and Pony went for the throat, voices sharpened to tear out the jugular. He could fill a bookshelf with the amount of times Soda stood between them. It didn’t bother Soda, that was the whole point. Nothing bothered Soda—but there they were, running through the darkened lot anyway, while Darry added another failure to the list.

(At least this time wasn’t entirely his fault, he thought with a certain petty satisfaction—Ponyboy was part of it, the fight that broke Soda. It was nice to finally share the blame; the weight less heavy on his shoulders.)

Afterward, when they picked themselves out of the dirt and ran home (keeping pace with each other, breathless laughter and shoulders bumping), Soda passed out on the couch. Unable to leave his little brother’s orbit, Darry leaned against the opposite wall and watched him.

In sleep, Soda looked too old to be a reckless teenager, with creases under his eyes and a frown pulling at his bottom lip. When they were little, Darry vowed to keep his middle brother happy and smiling forever. But time hadn’t been gentle to Soda; neither had his family.

Ponyboy leaned against the wall beside Darry, fingers twitching without a cigarette, and studied Soda with those glassy, unreadable eyes. “I don’t think we’re good for him,” he said at last. “We’re like vultures, pickin’ the soul clean off his ribs.”

What the hell does that mean? Darry rubbed his eyes, sighing. “We’re stressing him out.”

“That’s what I said.”

“Pretty damn sure you didn’t.”

Ponyboy’s eyes flashed with irritation, and Darry stiffened, ready for the fight. Then, a small noise came from the couch. Soda rolled over in his sleep, and with the gentleness of the movement, their will to fight bled away. Darry flexed his shoulders and forced them to relax. Beside him, Ponyboy sighed.

“We gotta start getting along,” Pony said, almost reluctantly. Almost like he enjoyed it, the snap of tension, the release. They fought recreationally. Nothing meant by it and no harm done—not to them, at least.

Darry shifted, just enough to study his baby brother in profile. When did he get so tall? At this rate he’d shoot past Soda and keep on going. (But wouldn’t be losing those noodle arms anytime soon, oh no. Only Darry got their dad’s physique.) But Ponyboy hadn’t lost his freckles yet. Soda’s faded when he was thirteen, and Darry missed them, the sun-touched sprinkles on his brother’s nose, imperfect and wholly him. He hoped Ponyboy would keep his. A small touch of childhood, long after childhood left them behind.

Darry was eighteen only yesterday, waiting for the world to kiss his hand. Now he stood closer to twenty-one than teenhood, thinking about freckles and the stress-creased lines under his brother’s eyes.

“I don’t know how to get along with you,” he admitted to Ponyboy. His baby brother who read poetry, who watched the world with silent eyes, who cared about movies and feelings and things Darry didn’t have time for. “We got nothing in common.”

Ponyboy hummed in that quiet, solemn way of his. “We got one thing.”

They turned back to Soda, still asleep on the couch. Too wrapped up in keeping the lights on and stopping Ponyboy from being mugged by his own prepubescent stupidity, Darry never stopped to consider Soda’s labor, shoulder to shoulder, by his side the entire time. Not at the DX, no—Soda’s work started in the morning with his arms wrapped tight around his little brother, and ended at night kneading the pain from Darry’s shoulders.

Darry might not understand Ponyboy’s writing or the way dew drops on the scraggly tree out back made his eyes go shiny, but he understood this: They loved Soda. And maybe, love could bridge the chasm between differences.

“No more fighting,” Darry said, and offered his hand.

“No more fighting.” Ponyboy took it. They shook, grips firm, voices firmer. “For Soda.”

(And maybe, for themselves, too.)

-

Life changed without Johnny and Dally.

Two-Bit got locked up soon after their death, bagged for rowdy behavior and public indecency—he was drunk, a permanent state. He’d only be gone a few months, but without his grin, the endless jokes and wisecracking, the silence seemed more stifling. Steve didn’t come around as much, always out with his girlfriend and more often than not taking Soda with him. Ponyboy used to spend his evenings with the gang. Now he stayed in his room, scratching away at that damn school essay, and Darry had nowhere to be and nothing to do.

Once, the house pooled in warmth, where laughter swam in golden light, boys’ voices layered atop each other in chaotic harmony. Now Darry sat alone in the recliner. The lamp was busted. He hadn’t fixed it yet.

-

As the weeks passed, only one good thing came from the odd tension settling over their house: Darry found a connection with Ponyboy. They formed an alliance, of sorts. The Sodapop Curtis Protection Club, with only one rule: bring Soda’s smile back. Lord knew, they needed it as much as Soda.

“It can’t be that hard,” Ponyboy said. “All we gotta do is be nice to him and not fight. That’s what keeps upsetting him, y’know?”

He made it sound too simple, but then, Darry didn’t know the first thing about navigating the complex minefield of his brother’s emotions. Ponyboy’s discomfort shocked Darry more than his own—he assumed Soda confided in Ponyboy the things Darry was too brutish to understand.

They did pretty good, too. Ponyboy still took potshots at Darry’s temper, and Darry stepped on Pony’s, but they kept a lid on outbursts, only fighting when Soda wasn’t around. No more shouting over homework or arguing at the dinner table. When Pony kicked a nerve, Darry locked his jaw tight and retreated into stony silence, and Pony too—no more fighting, so instead, they glared in silence until the heat passed.

Despite their efforts, Soda didn’t seem any happier. Sometimes, Darry suspected he was getting worse.

Soda used to bounce back from scrapes like a rubber ball against cement. Nothing could get to him, not really. The day after their parents’ funeral, he hauled Ponyboy out of bed to coax bits of scrambled egg down his throat like his little brother was some exotic bird in a cage. He went into fights laughing and danced out again with blood in his grin, wild and winsome. He shrugged off pain like an ill-fitting coat. Inconveniences were opportunities.

Darry had never been in the position of having to cheer him up, because the thing is, that’s what Soda did for Darry. Soda, who sometimes forgot to wear shoes but never to leave supper out when Darry got home late from work. Soda, who listened like it was a full-time profession, who reminded them how to laugh in those dark weeks after the funeral. Soda, who was always happy.

But after the fight between the three of them, something snapped. The slightest provocation set him off, his temper resting on a hair-thin trigger, tears never far behind. Darry had never seen him so easily-agitated.

“Why did you get strawberry jelly?” Soda demanded, fridge door propped open on his hip as he waved the unassuming jar in Darry’s direction.

Darry looked up from his plate of scrambled eggs. “Uh… we were out?”

“It’s strawberry.”

Darry looked from the jar, to Soda’s stricken face, to Ponyboy, who unhelpfully buried himself in the Saturday newspaper and refused to lift his head for the argument happening above it. “What’s wrong with strawberry?”

“I like grape!” Soda wailed. “You know I like grape!”

He stormed to the garbage bin. Darry sprang forward, but was too late to stop him. Soda chucked the entire jar. He stood over the trash, breathing heavily, gripping the counter with white knuckles. Darry hovered between scolding or apologizing. Neither seemed right for the murky tension drowning their kitchen, so he stayed silent. 

A moment later, Soda looked back with something like shame flickering in his eyes. He reached his entire arm into the trash to fish out the jelly. A gentle click as he set the jar reverently on the counter—and then Soda burst into tears.

The bedroom door slammed to the sound of Soda’s muffled sobbing. Ponyboy finally looked up.

“C’mon, Dar, you know he likes grape.”

Darry glowered. “You got an awful lotta attitude for someone who don’t buy groceries.”

And see, Darry did know. He even hunted down the grocer after searching the shelves without finding any grape jelly, only to discover their stock ran out. But Soda bounced between whims at the speed of a ricocheting bullet; Darry figured he’d like the change.

Ponyboy moved to stand. “I’ll talk to him.”

“Like hell you will,” Darry snapped, elbowing in front of him like it was some kind of competition—be the first to cheer up Sodapop Curtis, win a prize! (The prize being Soda’s favorite brother, and right now, Darry desperately needed to be someone’s favorite something, anything.)

They scrambled down the hall, shoving each other into walls and bashing their elbows on door frames. Ponyboy might be a squirrelly little devil, but Darry dwarfed him. He grabbed the kid by the back of the shirt and tossed him into the bathroom, holding the door closed to give himself a few steps’ head start.

“ No fair!” Ponyboy shrieked as Darry burst into Soda’s room with a wall-rattling bang.

“I’ll get you the right jelly—” he began, only to falter at the sight of Soda’s red eyes.

“Get out,” Soda snapped.

(For a moment, Darry thought he was talking to Ponyboy.)

He took a hesitant step forward. “Buddy, listen—”

A sock whipped past, narrowly missing his nose. “I don’t want to talk.” Soda scrubbed his face on his sleeve and pointed to the door. “Leave me alone.”

Darry passed Ponyboy in the hall, who grinned savagely. Maintaining eye contact with Darry, he walked into Soda’s room. “Hey, you wanna—”

A moment later, Ponyboy rejoined Darry in the hall. The door slammed behind him with a bam that reverberated up Darry’s spine.

He knocked Ponyboy atop the head. “What did your big brain make of all that?”

“He hates us,” Ponyboy said glumly.

-

Afterward, Soda apologized profusely.

“Don’t know what came over me,” he said, grinning with too much teeth. “Didn’t mean to get all weepy on you.”

Darry scratched the back of his neck. “Sorry about the jelly.”

“Really, it doesn’t matter. I dunno why it stuck in my craw like that.”

He hopped from foot to foot like a horse about to bolt. Darry knew that look. He grabbed Soda’s wrist, gripping it tight in his larger hand. “You okay, man?”

“I’m great!”

“I bought you more jelly. The, um. The right kind.”

Soda hesitated. Abruptly, his head dropped forward, smothering a wet sob into Darry’s shirt. Then just as quickly he was up again, springing away and scrubbing his eyes.

Darry took a step forward. “Listen, the jelly—”

“It’s not about the jelly!”

Darry reached out, but Soda flinched away. Everything screamed wrong, from the way he tensed, to the half step back when Darry came too close. His entire body vibrated with the wrongness of it; Soda, who craved touch like a lost puppy, who cozied and cuddled and latched onto whatever victim stood closest. But now he shied away, and it freaked Darry out, the distance between them, growing cold without the fire of burned bridges.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” Soda gasped, gripping the front of his shirt like he could dig out his heart. “It just comes out now, and I can’t stop it.”

Darry took another step forward. Soda shook his head. “I’m gonna find Steve,” he mumbled, and then he was gone, the door banging shut behind him.

-

A red stingray parked across the street from Darry’s roofing site. Red, the color of burned pride and dripping knuckles. Paul always liked to make a statement.

It shouldn’t surprise Darry, Paul being here—Tulsa had been his home too. Still, they locked eyes from across the street and Darry’s body tensed with the ghostly echo  of a punch.

He waited for Paul to drive away. Instead, Paul inched closer and rolled down the window.

The last time they saw each other, they were soaked in mud, Paul’s knuckles busted on the pearly white of Darry’s teeth. Now, with his hands tapping against the steering wheel and gaze skittering across the road, hair perfectly coiffed, Paul looked a far cry from the guy who showed up at the rumble last month.

Darry waited, not giving the courtesy of greeting him first.

Paul licked his lips. “Curtis,” he finally said.

“Holden.”

“I heard you were in court recently.”

“Yeah. Custody stuff.”

Paul smiled like an old chum, like the scabbed bruises on his knuckles didn’t come from cutting his fist on Darry’s face.

Darry was too tired for pretenses. “What do you want?”

“C’mon man, I can’t catch up with a highschool buddy?”

“Don’t pull that crap. You know damn well where we stood last month.”

“Don’t tell me you’re holding that against me,” Paul scoffed. “I thought greasers fought each other for kicks.”

“You ain’t a greaser.”

Paul shrugged. “We should get drinks sometime,” he said, like it was nothing. “For old time’s sake.”

Darry waited for the punchline. It didn’t come. Paul couldn’t quite hold his gaze, and Darry took a turn at scoffing.

“Get lost, Holden.”

-

Soda didn’t come home until late that night, reeking of exhaust fumes and cigarette smoke.

“I ain’t going off the rails,” he said, when he found Darry watching him. “You don’t gotta look so worried.”

Darry stepped forward, and Soda staggered slightly, pressing his palm to the wall for support. His eyes caught the light, glassy and moonish.

“I was thinkin’,” he said. “We shoulda beat up Johnny’s old man.”

Darry stiffened. “Soda—”

“We coulda done it, me and the guys, coulda beat the crap outta him, made it so he never hurt Johnny again—”

“Soda.” Darry took another step forward. Soda vibrated beneath his touch, raw energy, sloppy and stumbling. “You drunk?”

“Nah man, I didn’t even have that much.”

Darry could smell it now, the haze of cheap beer that followed Two-Bit like a jealous girlfriend, permeating his clothes and hair. Darry wasn’t such a stiff that he got after the boys for drinking, but Soda hated the stuff, always had. The last time Darry saw Soda drunk, the kid was fourteen hiding in the back shed with Two-Bit, and ended up intermittently sobbing, throwing up, and clinging to Darry. He hadn’t touched the stuff since.

Now the dull look in his eyes jarred Darry, the slowness of his voice and suggestion of violence. Darry dragged Soda to the couch—Ponyboy shouldn’t be part of this, it would only upset him—and made him lie down. Soda obeyed, docile as a newborn kitten.

“I was thinkin’,” he said, over and over while clutching at Darry’s hand, “we shoulda done more for the kid, y’know? We coulda smacked some sense into his dad, we coulda—”

“Hey, stop that.” Darry pulled the threadbare quilt off the back of the couch and unfolded it over his brother. “We did what we could for Johnny.”

“I just think we coulda done more”.

Darry sighed. “I know, buddy. Me too.”

-

Sunday bloomed like a golden secret, early enough to still be morning but late enough that Ponyboy had left by the time Darry woke up. Pony started going to church again after Johnny died, and in some funny way it seemed to help—made him calmer, more peaceful. A few times, Darry considered joining him, but Ponyboy never asked for Darry’s company. He left every Sunday morning with barely a word spoken over breakfast, and Darry felt uneasy going without being asked. Like he was invading something private, something meant for Ponyboy alone.

This morning, Darry woke to the sound of Soda retching.

He brought a glass of water to the bathroom. Soda leaned against the toilet bowl, his hair sticking to grayish skin. He grinned weakly. “Hey, Dar.”

“Hey Sodapop.” Darry handed him the glass.

“I forgot how much I hate this,” Soda said. He took a sip and immediately gagged again.

Darry shrugged. “You’re doing pretty good for a guy who’s only had two hangovers in his lifetime.”

“Three,” Soda mumbled. “One time Dally spiked my drink. It was a joke.”

“The hell—?” Darry sighed, rubbing his eyes. “What happened last night?”

Soda slumped onto the cool tile, an arm over his eyes to block out the light. “Sylvia said it would help.”

“So you’re now taking life advice from Dally’s crazy ex, huh?”

The only response was a groan.

Darry sighed, finally stepping forward to peel Soda off the floor. He felt disgusting, sticky everywhere, hair plastered to his forehead with a slick sheen of sweat. Soda mumbled something and then rocketed forward, getting to the toilet just in time to throw up again. Darry rubbed between his shoulder blades.

“You said some stuff last night,” Darry said, and Soda tensed under his hand. “About Johnny’s dad.”

“Oh, him.” As quickly as the tension came, he deflated like a popped balloon, all the air rushing out of him. “I thought I might’ve started bawlin’ about Sandy or something embarrassing.”

“You wanted to jump him.”

“I thought about it. Even went to their house.” He snorted. “They were too busy screamin’ at each other to even notice me.”

Darry bit down the scolding that rose to his tongue, shouts of “ what the hell were you thinking?” barely caged behind his teeth. Instead, he said, “Your knuckles ain’t bruised.”

Soda shook his head. “I wanted to kill him, Dar. But listening to ‘em fight, I thought maybe it ain’t that I wanted to kill him so much as I wanted Johnny back.”

“Hey, bud,” Darry said softly, “don’t do this again.”

Soda shook his head. His eyes were still glassy, this time with the faint sheen of tears. “It didn’t help, anyway. I thought about them more when I was drunk than I ever did sober.”

-

Darry had a lot of time for contemplation while up on the roofs. The sun wasn’t so hot, or the work too hard, that he could forget those final moments under the streetlight, with blood gurgling out of Dally like a busted pipe. He never expected Dallas Winston to make it past twenty. Still, he’d hoped.

They always wondered what went so wrong in Dally’s life to create the hood they knew. Oh, Darry could take a guess—his own home wasn’t so sheltered or his life so great that he couldn’t imagine what might go wrong for a guy. 

Johnny was different. With Johnny, they knew exactly what happened to make him so jumpy, knew why he crashed so often at Two-Bit’s house, long nights in the lot and faded bruises on his face. The Cade home had paper thin walls. Darry heard the screams.

Guilt had a funny way of eating at people. Darry’s family left him with too much guilt to take on Johnny Cade’s as well, but it wormed inside him anyway, making a home in his stomach. 

Maybe Sodapop was right. Maybe they could’ve done more.

-

It boiled over one day when Darry least expected it—he and Ponyboy weren’t even fighting. Sure, they’d glared at each other for the past hour, eating dinner in icy silence rather than break the stand-off. But a few months ago they would’ve devolved into a shouting match by now, so Darry considered their self-control a win.

Halfway through dinner, Soda laid his head on the table and started quietly crying, which had become an evening tradition. Past experience found that attempts at comfort only agitated him more, so Darry and Pony continued eating in silence.

 They plowed through dinner with enough tension to rival a hostage situation in one of those corny nighttime TV shows. Pony picked at his casserole. Darry made stoic eye contact with the salt shaker while shoveling broccoli into his mouth. Eventually Soda pushed his chair back and, with tear tracks still shiny on his cheeks, collected their plates.

“I’ve been doing good in track.” Ponyboy broke the silence, dangling words in front of Soda like a peace offering. “Coach says I’m best on the team.”

“That’s swell, Pony.” The sink turned on. Soda shook soap flakes into the basin and stirred until suds clung to his hands. “You know we’d go to more of your races if we didn’t have work.”

Ponyboy waved him off. “It’s fine.” His gaze slid to Darry, an unforgiving glint still caught in his eyes from their fight earlier— “Wouldn’t wanna bother a guy with stupid crap like showing up.”

Oh, Darry was gonna ground this scrawny twerp within an inch of his life.

But before he could react, Soda slammed a half-scrubbed plate against the counter with such force, it shattered in his hand.

“ Dammit, Ponyboy!” he shouted, louder than he’d been in weeks, “for the love of God, will you leave Darry alone? I swear, sometimes it’s like you want to think the worst of him.”

“I didn’t mean nothing by it,” Ponyboy spluttered.

“Then think about people’s feelings before spouting stuff you don’t mean.”

“Honest, Soda, I ain’t trying to upset you.” Somehow, Ponyboy still had the nerve to argue. “Darry’s feelings don’t get hurt by stuff like that!”

Such genuine rage flashed across Soda’s face, Darry thought he might start swinging. Darry blinked, and it was different night so many weeks ago, and his palm stung from the jut of Pony’s cheekbone. Old wounds healed slow, and fear didn’t heal at all. Darry was on his feet before history had the chance to repeat itself.

He tossed Soda over his shoulder and hauled the entire kicking, swearing mess of him into the living room. “What the hell is wrong with you?” he shouted, dumping Soda onto the couch.

Soda’s hand bled from the broken plate. He looked so much smaller sitting there, like he might crumble to pieces under Darry’s gaze, all the anger and hurt and fear—yes, fear—burning a stain onto the carpet.

“What’s wrong with you?” Darry asked again, softer. “This ain’t like you.”

“What the hell do you know?” Soda snapped. “You ain’t got a clue what I’m like. You still want me to be some damn cherub on a pedestal so you can feel better about yourself.”

Darry reeled backward. He felt— no, the twist in his stomach couldn’t be hurt, not from Sodapop. Soda hadn’t hurt Darry’s feelings a day in his life. Darry didn’t know how to treat the sharp words lodged in his chest, aimed with enough precision to pierce arteries.

Soda stared at him. “I’m sorry,” he stuttered, wide-eyed. “I dunno why I said that. I didn’t mean it.”

“I think you did.”

He clutched Darry’s shirt, fingers like claws. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Dar, I—”

The door banged open mid sentence. 

“Hey, fellas—” Steve pulled up short, stopped in his tracks by Soda’s red-rimmed eyes and a glare from Darry that could level mountains. “—should I go?”

“ Yes,” Darry snapped, at the same time Soda bolted.

“C’mon,” he said, tangible relief bordering on desperation as he grabbed Steve by the shirt and hauled him out. “Let’s cruise the Ribbon.”

The pictures on the wall rattled when the door slammed. Darry stood in the wake of it, wondering what the hell just happened.

-

Pony waited in the kitchen, still in shaken silence. Darry leaned against the door frame. “You okay?”

“Yeah.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “I kinda deserved it, honestly. Sorry.”

“No harm done.”

They drifted to the living room. When Darry sat down, Pony curled up next to him, head in his lap. “Fighting with Soda is weird,” Pony said softly.

“He’s scary when he yells.”

“Shoot, he yelled at you too?” Ponyboy squinted up at him. “Guess we finally found that common ground.”

Darry huffed on a laugh. “We’re really terrible at this, aren’t we.”

“Maybe we’re doing it wrong,” Ponyboy said. “Maybe we want Soda to be okay so we can be okay.”

“Sounds kinda selfish, when you put it like that.” Darry tousled Pony’s hair. “How’d you get so wise?”

“Learned it from a guy I know.”

“Sounds like a tuff fella.”

Ponyboy smiled up at him. “Yeah, he’s okay.”

His hair fanned across Darry’s legs, and Darry ran his fingers through the curls. It had grown long, the ends still stained blond from Johnny’s patchy dye job. Pony refused to cut it. He carried his grief for Johnny and Dally differently than when their parents died. He seemed more focused, all that quiet thoughtfulness pointed in a single direction. Darry didn’t know what Pony spent the past few weeks writing, but it seemed to help.

Ponyboy had found a way to cope. Meanwhile, Soda self-destructed right before their eyes, and Darry only watched, powerless to stop it.

“I don’t know how to fix this,” he admitted softly.

Ponyboy burrowed closer. “Me neither.”

This was a new place for them, unfamiliar and awkward, but not uncomfortable. Darry wasn’t used to Pony seeing so much of him, pulling the curtain away from his insecurities. And how many times had Soda nagged him about this very thing? “He don’t think like you, Dar. He needs words to know what you’re feeling.”

Darry did his best to let Ponyboy in, but it was unnatural, like prying a rusted grate off his heart inch by painstaking inch. Soda didn’t need words. He simply understood, the way birds learned to fly and grubs to burrow. Empathy was instinctual. Darry relied on it—easier to let Soda figure Darry out and relay it to Ponyboy than put his feelings into plain cold terms himself, where he couldn’t hide from them.

Soda understood Darry easier than breathing, but Darry was quickly realizing he didn’t understand Soda at all.

“I think—” he paused, took a deep breath, set his jaw in resignation— “I think we need help.”

-

“We don’t need this guy’s help,” Pony said for the fifteenth time.

Darry pinched the bridge of his nose. “Yeah, because we’re doing so great on our own.”

“We’re figuring it out!”

“We’re making it worse.”

Steve coughed. “Why am I here?”

“Shut up, Randle,” they snapped in unison.

Steve shrugged, taking another bite of chocolate cake. “Suit yourself.” He’d forgone a fork, picking up the slab with his fingers instead. Crumbs crusted the corners of his mouth. Darry wrinkled his nose. Disgusting.

Darry tasked Soda with buying groceries that night—a chore wildly unsuitable for Soda, as he usually got lost somewhere between the ice cream and candy aisle. But Darry’s hijacked shopping list was a small price to pay. With Soda gone for a few hours, Darry and Ponyboy cornered Steve and grudgingly inducted him into their Sodapop Curtis Protection meeting.

So far, nothing had been accomplished except Ponyboy and Steve swapping petty digs at each other, and Darry sighing loudly.

“Listen,” he said, banging a fist against the table to shut them up (but not before Pony stuck his tongue out at Steve, and Steve mimicked the gesture with a mouthful of half-chewed cake), “We gotta do something about Soda.”

Steve licked his fingers, one at a time. “He’s your brother, man.”

“But he’s your best friend.” (Darry personally thought Soda could do better, but then, Soda had an affinity for aggressive little mutts. Ponyboy was a prime example.) “We need help fixing him.”

Steve blinked at Darry, lip curled. “…the hell?”

“See,” muttered Ponyboy, “told you he’s useless.”

“Now hold on, you little turd, I ain’t said nothing yet.”

“Thank goodness.”

Steve flipped Pony the bird, and Pony flipped it back, and Darry once again sighed loudly. “Can we be adults?”

“Kinda rude sayin’ that to a twelve-year-old.”

“I’m almost fifteen!” Pony shrieked, and right on cue, his voice cracked.

Steve cackled, and… well, okay, maybe Darry started to understand what Soda saw in him.

“He’s your best friend,” Darry said again. “I figured he might’ve told you something.”

Steve eyed Darry. For a moment, Darry feared he would clam up, cuss them out and beat it, but after a moment of silent scrutiny, he said, “We ain’t got that kinda friendship, man. We don’t talk. Well, I mean, Soda does, but not like that.”

Ponyboy scoffed. “What do you even do together?”

“Look at cars. And girls. Mostly girls.”

Darry suspected the latter was added mainly for Ponyboy, and his suspicions were confirmed when Ponyboy’s face screwed up in disgust. Steve leaned back, smirking.

At this rate, Darry would get an ulcer.

“This is pointless,” he said, rubbing his forehead. (Ponyboy sneered —told ya so.) “You got nothing, I got nothing, and Soda’s going off the rails.”

“Dunno what to tell you, man.” Steve tipped his chair back on two legs, arms behind his head. “What’d he say when you asked him about it?”

Silence.

Steve’s chair rocked forward with a solid thunk. “You did ask him about it, yeah?”

Ponyboy wiped his nose on his sleeve. Darry rubbed his jaw.

“Unbelievable,” Steve said.

“I thought—” Ponyboy glanced at Darry, then looked away. “I figured he wanted me to leave him alone. Anyway, he talks to you way more.”

“Me?” Darry shook his head. “You’re his confidant.”

Steve guffawed. “Pony is what, nine?”

“Almost fifteen—”

“What guy tells their eight-year-old brother everything?”

Darry blinked. Come to think of it, Soda used to wait up for him on his late shifts so they could talk after Pony had gone to bed. But Darry also overheard them snickering together, heard the whispers and hushed confessions, and he thought, well— he wasn’t fun like that. He was just Darry, solid and silent and oh so grim, and he’d thought, why talk to a brick wall when Ponyboy breathed poetry?

“Listen,” Steve said, leaning forward, “if I pump too much air in a tire, and the tire blows, what happens next?”

“…you fix the tire?”

Steve sighed impatiently. “You can’t fix an exploded tire, dumbass.”

“Fine,” Darry huffed, feeling raw, “you don’t fix it, you just sit on your laurels while the whole thing falls apart.”

“Now who’s acting nine?” Pony said mildly.

“I ain’t a mechanic.”

Steve rolled his eyes. “Lucky for you, Soda ain’t a car.”

“Yeah, he’s way more complicated.”

“Not really,” Steve said. “You just gotta know what you’re looking at. Engines, they talk to you if you’re listening right.”

Ponyboy crossed his arms. “Okay, so what do you do with an exploded tire?”

Steve’s grin came sharp, bright as a switchblade under streetlights. “You think long and hard before putting air into the next one.”

After that, they didn’t have much more to say. Darry wasn’t one for metaphor; he preferred speaking straight with cold facts. But he thought he understood this, in that blunt way only Steve could manage.

Steve leaned back in his chair and sneered. “Idiots.” And then, as Darry caught his eye, flinched. “…please don’t hit me.”

-

The red stingray returned, parked across the street from Darry’s newest work site. Engine idling in the autumn chill, a rumbling purr. Minutes passed. An hour. Was this how Johnny Cade felt, being stalked by that blue mustang, always a shadow in the corner of his eyes? Darry saw red wherever he looked, the streak of blood and rage and pride burned into the backs of his eyelids. If the car brought a fight, then he’d fight, even though he hadn’t felt the crackle of adrenaline beneath his skin in months, that old craving for violence.

Something about Johnny in the hospital bed. Something about Dally under that streetlight. Something about almost losing his baby brother, to sickness, to the system. Something about Soda on his knees in the lot, sobbing because nothing ever changed.

Darry didn’t bite anymore. Not because he couldn’t, no; he simply didn’t want to.

The lunch bell heralded midday. And just like that, the red stingray disappeared, slipping away like blood down a drain.

-

Sunday came around like a blue-eyed girl, dressed in clear skies and golden sunlight. Darry laid in bed listening to Ponyboy’s quiet exodus, shuffling in the kitchen, the bathroom tap. Their ragged family bible swiped from the living room bookshelf, and then the porch creaked, the only indication he’d gone. Darry got up.

Soda slept with the covers up to his chin where Ponyboy carefully tucked him in. Darry was not so gentle.

“Get up,” he said, yanking Soda’s pillow out from under him. It had no effect, so he grabbed Soda by the ankle and dragged him off the bed. Soda hit the floor with a thump that would leave bruises, pulling half the blankets with him where they tangled in his legs. 

Darry, still holding his ankle, shook him. “Morning, sunshine!”

Soda rubbed bleary eyes. This was the part where Ponyboy would start spitting like a half-drowned tomcat, but Soda only grinned, still barely awake. “Hey, Dar.”

“Hey Sodapop.”

“Where’s Pone?”

“Church.”

“Okay.” He turned over and went back to sleep, right there on the floorboards.

Darry dragged Soda up again, this time throwing him over his shoulder and hauling him to the kitchen, where he deposited Soda in a chair. Soda slumped over the table and groaned. “There should be a law against waking up this early.”

“Tough luck, buddy.”

Pony left the eggs out (and the bread, and the butter, and—well, basically everything he made breakfast with) and Darry whipped together something while the coffee brewed. Soda fell asleep again, his cheek pressed to the sticky place where Ponyboy ate, and only woke up when Darry clunked the jar of (grape) jelly in front of him.

They ate breakfast in silence, the first peaceful morning they’d spent together in who knew how long—just the two of them, no Ponyboy, no fighting, no quiet tears. Soda was awake enough to start looking sad. But he didn’t say anything, and Darry didn’t ask.

When they licked their plates sparkling clean, he made Soda get dressed. Soda’s forehead creased; “Is the social worker coming?”

Darry snorted. “Glory, wouldn’t that be a treat.”

“Then what’s the occasion?”

“We’re going on a field trip. Wear your boots.”

-

Years had passed since Darry had time or desire to hang out at the rodeo, but he still remembered the gap in the chain link fence, and how to scramble through without tearing his clothes. They wandered from barn to barn, hanging over fences and scratching horses behind the ears. They sat on the bleachers with the seats behind them digging into their spines, and swapped stories about the antics that happened within those dusty pens—saddle bronc and barrel racing, Steve’s ill-hidden hatred for horses, Dally riding bull.

Some of the fire rekindled in Soda’s eyes as he buried his face in horse hide, velvet nostrils snuffling his hair and clothes. This place fit around Soda’s shoulders the same way Darry wore his highschool football jersey, lived-in and reeking of memories. Everything Tulsa had to offer Sodapop Curtis lived here. This place, his birthright.

They passed a corral, and Soda’s gaze caught on the rodeo chutes, following them with his eyes as they passed. Darry wondered which grief caused the sudden tension in his shoulders, Mickey Mouse or his injured knee or the phantom of Dallas Winston kicking up his heels. Maybe all three.

Darry brought sandwiches, ham and swiss cheese. They ate them in a patch of grass beside the sheep pen. The sun baked their skin golden brown to match the earth. In the past, Soda would’ve chattered Darry’s ear off, but today they spent their time in silence. Darry didn’t mind. Soda tipped his face upward, a closed-eyed sunflower drinking in light, and Darry watched. The quiet was nice. Unfamiliar, but comfortable.

Afterward, Darry took Soda back to the truck and sat him on the tailgate. Soda knew what came next, the intuitive little bastard, because even then he still read his brother like a newspaper, Darry’s every thought and feeling broadcast in clean black ink. He squirmed away when Darry rested a hand on his knee— “It was a nice morning, Darry. Don’t ruin it.”

The memory of Steve steadied Darry’s resolve. “You know we gotta have it out.”

Perched on the back of the truck at eye-level, Soda kept his face turned away, studying the gravel. Darry tried to catch his gaze. Soda refused to look at him.

“Did I do something wrong?” Darry asked.

Soda shook his head.

“Are you scared of me?”

Now he finally glanced up, startled. “Golly, no. I could never be scared of you.”

“Then why won’t you talk to me?”

“Hell, I thought getting me to shut up was the hard part.”

There, a joke to break the tension. Darry watched him retreat behind a smile, teeth like shields. Sparkling innocent and slipping away. And yet— Darry gripped Soda’s knee harder. He saw a struggle, too. Cracks in the brittle smile; Soda tried to bring the mask down but couldn’t quite manage it, and frustration, more than pain, dragged the tears down his cheeks.

“Dammit—” Soda muttered, scrubbing at his eyes while stringing together a filthy kebab of curses under his breath. “I’m fine, it’s— let’s just go home, Darry, please—”

Darry pulled Soda’s hands away from his face. Tear tracks cleaned the dirt off his cheeks. “Tell me what’s wrong.”

For a moment, he glimpsed Johnny Cade in Soda’s eyes, and Dallas Winston, and every kind of fear Darry ever saw embodied in a person. Then, hoarsely, a surrender— “I read Ponyboy’s English assignment.”

Darry tilted his head.

“I shouldn’t snoop, I know,” Soda said. “And I didn’t get very far, only the first couple chapters. But he worked so hard on it, and gets so embarrassed about letting people read his stuff—and he’s damn good, Dar, I’m stupid but even I know it.”

“You’re not stupid,” Darry said reflexively, but Soda shrugged it off.

“It’s just, we’ve been through hell, y’know? I thought it would be something nice. Like, I dunno, a cowboy story or something.”

Darry closed his eyes. “It wasn’t.”

“No.” Soda let out a strangled laugh. “It was about us. You. And— and me.”

“Sweetheart,” Darry said, oh so cautiously, “whatever he said, you know he’s just an addle-brained kid, right? He don’t know what he thinks from one day to the next.”

“No, that’s just it!” Soda looked up with his entire heart in his eyes, cracked and bleeding down the center. “Darry, he hates you.”

Stillness. The crackle of air in Darry’s ears, static white.

Soda cried harder. “I kept telling you he didn’t, that he’s just fourteen, but I lied. He really hates you. And I shouldn’t, but—” Soda gulped, digging his fingers into Darry’s shirt— “I hate him for it.”

And Darry…

Darry laughed.

It burst out of him, soft and scratchy, catching on his teeth. Because Ponyboy glared at him across the kitchen table. And called him names. And resented him, and misunderstood him, and fought over the last piece of cake, and read books with his head resting on Darry’s thigh, and sometimes asked for Darry when he had nightmares. Whoever they were, whatever Pony used to feel, whatever resentment still lingered, one thing stayed crystal clear, so startlingly obvious Darry didn’t know how he ever missed it:

“Ponyboy doesn’t hate me,” he said. The words hung suspended. He knew they were true.

“Then he hates me.”

The absurdity should make him laugh even more, but he was too caught off guard. “That’s foolishness, Sodapop.”

“You didn’t read the damn essay,” Soda countered. “He thinks I’m some kinda golden idol, wings and everything. He thinks— hell, Darry, he thinks I don’t feel nothing.”

Darry thought of the past few weeks, the growing bond between him and Ponyboy as they struggled to understand their middle brother, and felt that this assessment of Ponyboy wasn’t entirely correct. Certainly, Pony used to idolize Soda. But he’d grown. They both had.

Darry pushed sticky hair off Soda’s forehead. “Ponyboy doesn’t hate you, Sodapop. That’s crazy talk.”

“But I ain’t what he needs me to be,” Soda said. “Johnny and Dally died, and it’s like I can’t breathe no more, it’s like—” he clutched his chest, fingers digging into his shirt— “I don’t know why I can’t hold it in. I used to. I was happy. For you. For both of you.”

“A tire pumped with too much air,” Darry murmured, and pulled him close.

Soda didn’t cry. He pressed his face into the crook of Darry’s neck, sticky with sweat and hurt and hope, and simply shook. He shook, and it was everything all at once—Johnny burning up and Dally bleeding out, Sandy and the baby that wasn’t his, Ponyboy’s scorn. Darry’s distance. The fighting, eternal tension stealing all the air. Mickey Mouse and rodeos long past, a torn ligament, a lost dream. Their parents ripped to pieces on those tracks.

“There you are, baby,” Darry whispered, squeezing so tight he worried it hurt. “Let it out.”

Soda did. And for the first time in months, Darry didn’t feel afraid.

“I don’t think Ponyboy recognizes me no more,” Soda mumbled tearfully into Darry’s shoulder. “I don’t recognize me, either.”

“Soda, you’re my brother—that don’t change even if you do.” Darry said. “I recognize you.”

It was so unlike them, for Soda to be the one asking instead of reassuring, leaning his entire weight into Darry’s chest. But something about the unsureness made Darry feel more sure, made him feel bigger and stronger and fiercely protective. Maybe this was how Superman felt when he saved the day; not crushing responsibility and the burden of his own failures, but somehow better because of it, somehow stronger by the frailty of those he protected.

“I love you,” Darry said, to the wind and sky and brother in his arms. The words didn’t hurt like they used to. Nothing hurt like it used to.

Soda pressed closer. They would be okay.

-

When Ponyboy returned from church at midday, Darry caught his arm, dragged him back onto the porch and shushed him, even though Pony always moved quiet.

“Where’s Soda?” Pony asked.

“Sleeping.”

“Still?”

“No, I put him back to bed.”

Ponyboy narrowed his eyes, scanning Darry with that appraising look. “What did you do?”

“I took Steve’s advice,” Darry said.

Pony snorted. “Did it work?”

“Yeah. It worked. But if Steve finds out, you’re grounded until college.” Darry ran a hand through his hair. “You should talk to Soda when he wakes. There’s some stuff to clear up.”

Ponyboy nodded, turning away. He was stepping through the door when Darry stopped him again, and then, because Darry was on a roll today, still reeling with adrenaline and the high of emotions, added, “I love you, buddy.”

Ponyboy hesitated, already halfway back inside, and glanced over his shoulder. Something flickered in his eyes Darry couldn’t place, a stillness unknown. Something heavy. Something liquid. Then, with a very great effort—

“Love you too, Dar.”

-

And somehow, life went on.

Darry Curtis was twenty years old and still breathing. He buried his parents and two of his buddies, but his brothers still slept in the room down the hall. Soda still ate eggs with grape jelly. Ponyboy still read like he was running out of time. Somehow life went on, and in the stillness between griefs, Darry thought, we’re gonna be okay.

He got promoted, and with each new paycheck, the weight of unyielding bills eased off his shoulders. He smiled more than he used to. Rested more than he should. They still went down to the lot sometimes, threw the football around and messed with each until Darry got a brother under each arm and they all ended up in the dirt. It was familiar, this roughhousing. Almost like they were kids again.

Two-Bit got out of jail. Soda and Steve threw him a party—really just cake and beer, the record player booming in the corner, and a handmade banner that said “welcom home!” If the missing E gave Ponyboy a conniption, he didn’t show it. “It looks swell, Soda,” was all he said, and avoided looking at it for the rest of the night.

For all that he’d been through, Two-Bit remained remarkably unchanged. He burst through the door like a hound off his leash, gave everyone bear hugs, and immediately ransacked the fridge.

“Bet Dally’s pissed I’m breaking his jailbird record,” he yelled over his shoulder, mouth full of cake. He wasn’t anywhere close to breaking Dally’s record, but as a coming home present, nobody challenged the assertion.

Mrs. Mathews and Two-Bit’s sister brought a casserole. Mrs. Mathews hugged Darry tearfully, patted his cheek and told him what a fine job he was doing. Then, to everyone’s surprise, the Shepards dropped in—Tim and Curly, and even their little sister Angela (who spent the night batting her eyelashes at Sodapop and Ponyboy, and cheating at cards). Tim clasped Darry’s hand, his grip firm.

“You boys hanging in there?” he asked.

Darry huffed a laugh. “Keeping our chins up.”

Tim got it, probably more than anyone else in the room, maybe even Soda. They shared a beer on the back porch; Darry sitting on the steps, and Tim standing above him, leaning on the railing. Laughter and light spilled through the door behind them—somewhere, Steve’s ugly cackling broke over the din, followed by a shriek from Ponyboy. Music cavorted. Laughter, like lyrics, danced with it.

“Y’know something, Curtis?” In the darkness, Tim’s eyes glinted like twin cigarette tips. “You got lucky, with all this.”

And it was a stupid thing to say, because nobody should look at the tragedy of Darry Curtis and call him lucky, not now, after all they’d been through. But he locked eyes with Tim, saw the ghost of Dallas Winston haunting that sharp face, and understood anyway.

Tim turned away, huffing softly. “Bastard,” he muttered, and Darry didn’t have to ask to know he was thinking about pale hair, cold eyes, fangs for teeth.

-

The next time Darry saw the red stingray, he sat perched on a beam with a handful of nails, hammer pounding iron through wood one at a time. The flash of crimson caught his eye, parked there on the corner. Engine idling. Windows rolled up to hide the boy behind the wheel.

Darry kept an eye on it as he worked, but the car remained even when twilight turned the shadows lavender blue. Darry put away his tools and shouted goodnight to his crew, giving and receiving slaps on the shoulder. He paused by his truck. The red mustang waited like a smear of blood in his periphery.

Common sense warned Darry to get in the truck and drive away. Instead, he crossed the street.

When Darry rapped his knuckles against the window, it rolled down slowly. A moment of silence passed. Darry waited for Paul to speak first. He didn’t. After everything, Paul was still the bigger coward.

Darry wanted to hate him. Instead, he said, “Wanna get a drink?”

-

They found a cruddy little East Side bar—cheap beer and vomit, where Tulsa low life went to brawl and cheat at pool. Paul, in his crisp polo shirt, stood out like a polished penny. He wrinkled his nose when they sat down. Darry would’ve been embarrassed, before. He was too tired for it now.

So much history heaped on the table between them, spilling over the bottles of lukewarm beer. Paul looked at Darry with pity and disgust. Darry looked at Paul and saw the ghost of a future stolen from him. He didn’t envy Paul, not anymore. Easier to envy Dallas Winston—at least Dally knew he was society’s dog, backed into a corner.

“Why did you come back for the rumble?” Darry asked.

Paul hesitated a beat too long. Darry knew that look: Paul was deciding whether or not to lie.

“I heard you’d be there.”

Ah. The truth won.

Afterward, they lingered outside, shoulder-to-shoulder with their backs pressed to the side of Paul’s fancy car. Starlight and a haze of smoke tangled in their hair. Darry inhaled, letting the smell of childhood fill his lungs. He was seventeen again, sneaking out his bedroom window, a blue-eyed best friend waiting for him just beyond the corner of the lot. Late nights spent just like this, loitering by the cars. With nobody but the moon for a witness, they’d made plans and promises, whispered dreams of the future, ripe for the plucking.

Now they stood close enough to touch, but miles of resentment festered between them. Now, they were men. Now, they were strangers.

“I don’t hate you,” Darry whispered to the darkness. This, too, was true.

Maybe the pity reflected in his eyes, because Paul said, “You know, you could’ve done something really important with your life.”

Darry thought of the boys back home, and said, “I already am.”

Paul hesitated for a moment, and then at last, extended his hand to shake. Finality lingered in his grip, and the barely-there brush of his thumb against the back of Darry’s hand. “Goodbye, Darrel.”

“Goodbye, Paul.”

“Good luck.”

Darry thought he meant that, too.

-

Soda knew something happened before Darry even said anything, waiting outside when Darry pulled into the drive. Darry told him about Paul. Soda wrinkled his nose, but Darry cut him off— “I didn’t say none of the crap I wanted to about Sandy, so stow it.”

Soda bit his lip and caged the final insults.

They talked about it, sharing a smoke on the front porch. “He was sorry for me,” Darry said.

Soda snorted. “Bastard.”

“Funny thing is, I’m not.”

“A bastard?”

“Sorry for me.”

“Huh.” Soda blew smoke in a long, clean trail, and watched it wisp away above his head. “Didn’t think this place would grow on you.”

Darry took the cigarette back. “It didn’t. Guess I’m just used to it.”

A car passed slowly, headlights painting them gold and spilling through the cracked porch steps. A baby’s cries drifted through the open window as the car turned onto the next street. In the sudden loss of light, Darry felt, more than saw, Soda stiffen at the sound.

A question had been brewing in Darry’s mind for weeks, with no right way to ask. When he did, the words came out flat and toneless: “Sandy’s baby wasn’t yours.”

Soda shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. I would’ve loved them anyway.”

“Do you know the other guy?”

Silence.

Darry stood, his voice dropping low. “Gimme a name and I’ll break his face.”

Soda dragged him back down by the wrist. “Cool your jets, man. What’re you gonna do, storm his house? We settled with the socs; there ain’t been a jumping in months, not since—”

(Blood on pavement, slick as rain, thick as oil. The stench of gun smoke. Dally’s cold, dead eyes.)

Darry threw away the cigarette. “Guess you lost your taste for fights.”

Soda smiled. “Haven’t we all?” 

Darry wondered when he started looking so grown-up, the baby fat cut to lean lines, his eyes soft and wise. He sat still better than he used to. Darry wondered when that happened, too.

Time hadn’t been kind. The past Soda didn’t carry a shadow in his eyes, the silly little kid who talked more and cried less and laughed without layers of hardship catching on his teeth. Darry looked at him, really looked, and in the dim glow of the streetlight, the truth of it settled—he’d never be that Soda again. Another thing stolen from Darry. Another grief to bear.

Still. Darry noticed freckles on his brother’s nose. Soda hadn’t had freckles since he was fourteen. Darry thought he would never see them again, but they dusted his face, a hint of sun.

Darry’s gaze dropped to his own hands hanging in his lap. Strong, scarred, rougher than a ream of sandpaper. Somehow during the past year of wearing his father’s work gloves, the hands inside them had changed as well—Darry had inherited not just the gloves, but his father’s wide palms, made for building, not fighting or throwing footballs. 

“I never understood you,” he admitted, nudging Soda with his elbow. “All these years, I thought you wanted to stay here because you loved Tulsa.”

Soda dropped his head onto Darry’s shoulder. “It was never about Tulsa.”

“Yeah. I think I get it now.”

He thought of Paul’s perfect hands. The crisp polo shirt and combed hair. The derision in his eyes. The desperation. 

Darry clasped his hands.

No, he wasn’t sorry for himself. 

-

When midnight settled around the house, bringing nightmares with it, Darry walked the hall, padding softly on socked feet. Memories soaked up through the creaking floorboards, this same path he traveled since infancy, since he first learned how to toddle on shaking legs with his father’s hands holding him steady. The door opened at his gentle touch. He breathed the darkness of this childhood room and counted the lumps beneath the covers. One brother. Two. Both safe within his reach.

He let himself linger there, in the space between their bed and the hall. How many nights has he taken this path and waited just beyond reach, always watching but never stepping forward? How many nights had he stood six feet away and felt a million miles between them?

The emptiness of the house tugged at him. His silent room, like a scar at his back. The nightmares. The loneliness.

Darry stepped forward.

It took a moment of silent rearranging to fit on the narrow mattress—Ponyboy curled on the edge and hogged the entire blanket in his tightly clasped fists, while Soda sprawled loose-limbed in the remaining space—but with enough prodding, Darry was able to slide between them. He pried the quilt from Pony’s sweaty hands and arranged it over the three of them. They didn’t fit. Nobody cared.

Ponyboy stirred sleepily, “Quit swipin’ all the covers, man,” with his ice-cold feet and hands leeching warmth from the mattress. Soda didn’t wake, but turned over in his sleep to fit himself cozily against Darry’s side. The flutter of eyelashes on Darry’s arm. A soft hum. Ponyboy snored. They were warm, and real, and their pulses harmonized with Darry’s own.

For the first time in months, Darry slept, unbroken, until morning.

-

With enough money coming in to finally rest easy (well, easier), Darry got reckless and took an afternoon off from work. The day was clear, crisp as a deep-fried apple and golden around the edges. Soda turned the truck radio all the way up; Darry didn’t stop him. They hurtled down the highway, windows open to the wind, singing rock ‘n roll at the top of their lungs until their voices shredded from laughter and lack of air.

They elbowed through crowded bleachers at Will Rogers High, where Darry used his most intimidating stare to get them a good seat. Two-Bit joined them, and even Steve— “Waste of an afternoon,” he grumbled, and handed Soda a pepsi.

Ponyboy might be a scrawny little devil, head in the clouds more often than not, but damn, the squirt could run. He made the pass by the bleachers with heels spitting gravel. Soda sprang to his feet screaming, and then Darry too, roaring at the top of his lungs as Ponyboy rocketed around the turn. Two-Bit bellowed “feed ‘em fire, kid!” and even Steve rose with the surge to wolf-whistle.

The white-collar parents on the bleachers shifted away from the pack of hollering greasers, their pretty little noses pinched at the sight. For all their manners, it didn’t matter. They greasers kept hollering.

“Shoot,” Ponyboy muttered afterward with burning ears, “y’all didn’t need to make such a fuss.”

Soda slung an arm around his shoulders. “Sure we did!”

“East Side pride,” Darry said, ruffling Ponyboy’s hair. Pony shoved them away (Soda cackled, and messed up his hair again), but his blush glowed brighter.

They finished the day at Dairy Queen. The whole pack of them, crammed into a little booth by the window, with Two-Bit shooting spit-balls at Soda’s forehead, Ponyboy subtly kicking Steve’s ankles and Steve stalwartly pretending it didn’t hurt.

Darry ended up pressed against the window with Two-Bit’s knees knocking against his under the table and the switchblade-sharp point of Soda’s elbow pressed into his ribs. He gave Soda the cherry off his sundae. The candied syrup left a sticky red smear on the corner of Soda’s mouth, sugar and teeth.

Ponyboy pouted. “Where’s mine?”

“You don’t like cherries,” Darry said.

“Yeah, but you’re always hand-feedin’ him like some pet poodle, and leaving me the scraps.”

Darry shrugged. “I can hand feed you too,” and smeared a dollop of whipped cream down a spluttering Ponyboy’s face. Pony threw a spoon at him. Darry knocked it away (it hit Steve instead) and guffawed— “You should take that weapon to a rumble, bet the socs will be real impressed.”

“You can have some of my french fries, Ponyboy,” Soda offered, and scooped them onto Pony’s plate.

Two-Bit cackled. “Look, another pet poodle!”

“It’s ‘cause I’m Soda’s favorite,” Ponyboy said primly.

Darry scoffed. “Since when?”

“Birth.”

“Nice try, bucko. I’ve known him longer.”

“Did you get french fries?”

“Did you teach him how to drive?”

“Did you—”

“Guys,” Soda interjected, “I don’t have a favorite brother.”

They paused, studying him for a moment. “Sure,” said Ponyboy, and turned back to Darry. “Anyway, it’s me.”

Soda laughed, all roses. “C’mon man, I mean it. I love you ‘cause you’re my cool kid brother, and I love Darry—” he knocked his knee against Darry’s— “’cause I’m his pet poodle.” Then, clambering over Steve’s legs to escape the booth, “I’m getting another milkshake,” and was gone, off to beam at the woman behind the counter.

“Think he actually means that?” Two-Bit whispered, too casual for good intentions.

Ponyboy shook his head. “He’s just trying to spare Darry’s feelings.”

They laughed, even Darry, who hurled a crumpled napkin at Pony’s head. “Keep dreamin’, kiddo.”

“You know,” said Pony, “there’s a way to settle this.”

“Sure is,” Darry agreed. They both turned to Steve.

Like turning the porch lights on a raccoon caught in the garbage, Steve froze beneath their stares. “Leave me outta whatever this is.”

“You’re his best friend,” Pony said. “You should know.”

Darry nodded. He flicked a finger between Ponyboy and himself. “Which of us is his favorite?”

Steve’s gaze swiveled between them. Then, he paused on Ponyboy. Discomfort melted into a slow smirk, all teeth. “It’s Darry.”

Darry hooted, Pony screeched— “you’re just sayin’ that!—” and Soda returned with another round of milkshakes, wondering what the hell he missed.

-

They made one last stop on their way home, just the three of them. Darry parked the truck, and for a moment, no one moved; just the idling engine and their breath, trapped in the cab.

“They’re waiting,” Darry said at last, and like an exhale, everyone scrambled to get out.

The slope to their parents’ grave grew smooth and green, autumn chilled grass slick beneath their feet. A touch of woodsmoke in the air—winter beckoned, and with it, the anniversary. Thunder and train whistles. Tire marks in the gravel. Blood on the tracks.

Darry hadn’t thought about it, couldn’t let himself consider a year without them, for fear he’d simply stop moving forward. Still, in the sanctity of this place, the grass and sky like old friends, with a hollow worn into the earth from where he so often sat, he let his mind dance around the concept. One whole year. Six months ago, he didn’t think they’d make it past the next day.

One whole year.

Twilight gathered in the hollow by their graves. The earth stayed silent.

“D’you think they’d be proud of us?” Ponyboy asked softly.

Darry thought of all that happened in their year apart—the fighting and the fear, every day a struggle, every night a tomb. Losing Johnny. Losing Dally. Almost losing Ponyboy. Almost losing Soda.

Almost losing himself.

A slender hand slipped into Darry’s and gripped tight. “I’m proud of us,” Soda said, clutching Pony with his other hand.

Darry looked at him, and for a moment saw a glimpse of his mother’s eyes, heard the softness of his father’s voice. And he thought, too, of late nights at the kitchen table with Soda, and the quirk of Ponyboy’s smile when he watched Darry, the glimmer of respect in his eyes, football in the lot, chocolate cake and cigarettes.

“You got lucky with all this, ” Tim Shepard said.

Darry squeezed Soda’s hand. “I’m proud of us too.”

Chapter Text

Sodapop Curtis turned twenty on a brisk, sunny day in October.

His birthday surprised him, as it did every year; time felt too infinite for milestones. He wasn’t like Darry, plodding forward with every hour posing a goal to be met, his birthday just another boring ol’ day of the week. And he wasn’t like Ponyboy, who dreaded the passage of time, terrified by the burden of growing older and the responsibility he carried—to himself and his family, to make them all proud.

(Dumb kid. He accomplished that the day he was born.)

No, Soda liked birthdays, but they still took him by surprise. The future was a distant suggestion. He felt forever fourteen, caught in that sunny plot of childhood before grief stole away the roses. Twenty years old. He’d never felt so young.

Ponyboy called the house first thing that morning. Soda grinned into the phone receiver. “Big time college kid still remembers his folks back home?”

“Shut up,” grumbled Pony, his voice grainy with sleep and distance. “You know I wouldn’t forget your birthday.”

Soda smiled. “I know.”

It was the first birthday without Ponyboy since he started college a few months ago, and missing it bugged the kid to death. Pony promised  to visit when the weekend arrived. “We’ll have a big party, cake and everything,” he said before hanging up.

After a few well-delivered arguments (otherwise known as relentless badgering), Darry finally agreed to take the day off work. Soda gave him the look, wet-eyed and lip quivering, and Darry crumbled like a sandcastle. 

“That ain’t fair,” he muttered, covering his face. “You’re playin’ dirty.”

“It’s my birthday. You have to do what I want, it’s the rules.”

Darry rolled his eyes. “Sure, Sodapop, whatever you say.”

(The thing is, Darry wouldn’t even take off for his own birthday, just charged through an endless roofing shift until finally collapsing, sweaty and bone-tired, into bed. It sure was power, being able to twist his brother’s arm into anything he wanted with nothing more than a teary-eyed pout. Power—or a terrible, inescapable curse.)

So this is what happened: Sodapop Curtis turned twenty on a brisk, sunny day in October, with his baby brother hours away at school and both parents in the ground. Maybe he should feel lonely. But noise echoed from the kitchen, Darry bumping his elbows on the furniture and cursing under his breath while trying to hang streamers and balloons. (Darry had become many things with age, but delicate ain’t one of them.) Soda couldn’t feel lonely with all that reluctant affection brewing in the house. 

Darry even let Soda sleep in. That’s about the closest Darry Curtis would come to saying “I love you.”

When Soda emerged from his room  at the grand ol’ hour of noon, Darry snapped a cheap drugstore party hat onto Soda’s head.

 “So, birthday boy,” he said. “According to you, I gotta do whatever you want. What’ll it be? Rodeo? Drag racing? I heard Buck got a new batch of racing stock, we could go give ‘em a look.”

Soda adjusted the elastic under his chin and beamed. “I want to go fishing.”

-

Years of teenage feet traipsing through the forest had packed the trail down to red clay, with the lake at the end glistening like a prism. Rainbows danced in the reflection. The brothers had shucked off their outer flannels by the time they reached the bank, stripped down to t-shirts and sweat. Soda carried the poles and tackle. Darry lugged the cooler.

Countless childhood afternoons were spent with their dad in that exact spot. Soda, freckled and a foot shorter, would prowl around in the woods chasing squirrels, too flighty to stay by the poles for long. Ponyboy usually trailed after him, but not Darry. Camped out on the shore, lazy as falling leaves, you couldn’t tell the difference between Darrel Sr.’s strong back or his eldest son’s.

Now, Soda saw dad in the stretch of Darry’s shirt over his shoulders as he knelt to bait the hooks, brow furrowed in concentration. After all these years, the familiarity of the sight set his heart glowing. The world might’ve burned between then and now; but some things never changed.

“You remember how to cast?” Darry asked.

Soda blinked out of his reverie. “Huh?”

Darry snorted, and cast for him.

They sat with legs dangling off the drop. The lake burbled beneath them, an invitation on a warm day. Soda fiddled with his fishing rod. The little spool of line caught the light when he twisted it. Fascinated, he continued turning the crank, watching the line go taut.

A large hand covered his. “You’re gonna scare the fish off,” Darry said, taking the pole away from him. Darry propped it on the ground with a branch.

“I’ll make a fire,” Soda said, jumping up. “We can cook hamburgers or something.”

Darry chuckled. “We just got here.”

“So?” He rummaged through the cooler and tossed a beer in Darry’s direction. “My stomach ain’t got a clock.”

He wandered in search of sticks for tinder. The woods were too quiet, only the phantom trace of wind stirring the leaves. It got under Soda’s skin. He liked the burn of rubber on asphalt, motors roaring in salt heat. All this peace made him antsy.

 Darry watched with a faint glimmer of amusement in his eyes. Finally, he propped his own fishing pole on the ground and stood. “Alright Soda, what’s all this about?”

Soda froze. He had a pocketful of moss (he liked the feeling, all squishy in his palm), and some bones he discovered under the moss, probably a bird’s, but he hadn’t found the skull yet—

“Soda.” Darry grabbed his chin. “Focus.”

“What’s what about?”

Darry leveled him with a stare. “You hate fishing. Always have.”

He ducked away. “Can’t a guy change his mind?”

Darry glanced pointedly at the fistful of mud and bones Soda hid behind his back. His eyes tracked towards the abandoned fishing poles, and then the cooler, left open from Soda’s rummaging. “You packed hamburgers and beer.”

“I like hamburgers and beer!”

“No, I like hamburgers and beer.” Darry settled on his heels. “I like fishing, too. Ain’t that funny?”

“Hilarious,” Soda muttered. He should start crying or something, ‘cause Darry would probably drop the subject. He just needed a couple wet breaths—let his mind wander to sad things, kicked puppies and sold horses, Ponyboy hundreds of miles away, the look on Darry’s face when they lost their parents—

“Oh hell no,” Darry snapped. He latched onto Soda’s head, his palm covering Soda’s entire face like an octopus. “Don’t even try.”

“Would it work?” Soda asked between the gaps of Darry’s fingers.

Darry sighed. “Probably.” He stepped away, back towards the fishing poles. “It’s your birthday, man. Why’s it starting to feel like mine?”

Soda trudged after him. The plan seemed great when he thought of it (at three A.M. last night), totally subtle and all that stuff. It would work if Darry didn’t know him so damn well. 

Darry leaned his back against a tree. Reclining like that, casual as a king, with a trace of fondness softening his face, Soda could almost glimpse through a window in time. People used to think their father and Darry were brothers—got confused by the same blunt handsomeness, the stone in their eyes when something riled ‘em up. After their dad died, nobody made the mistake again. Not because Darrel Sr. was gone, but because Darry changed. 

Their dad never yelled like Darry did. Their dad laughed too much to ever be feared.

“You smile more,” Soda said now, as he watched his brother. “You didn’t used to.”

Darry huffed a laugh. The creases in his face softened, until Soda couldn’t tell the difference between the ones made from labor and the ones from laughter. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Soda shook his head. “It’s just, when we were kids—”

The bobber on Soda’s fishing line plunged underwater.

They both saw it, the splash rippling a spray of rainbows while the line jerked like crazy. “I got it,” Soda shrieked, lunging for the pole at the same time Darry tried to grab it away.

“Wait, you gotta be gentle—”

Moving too fast to avoid the collision, burnt rubber and smashed fenders, the fishing pole caught between them as they careened into each other and right off the edge of the embankment. Soda’s stomach dropped. His elbow in Darry’s face and Darry’s knee is in his gut, one hand clutching the fishing rod and the other tangled in Darry’s shirt. They hit the lake together. The world turned to mud and minnows

Water burned Soda’s eyes as he came up gasping for air.

“Knucklehead!” Darry spluttered as he surfaced. Hair plastered his forehead and stuck to his neck. “You little—”

Soda splashed him in the face.

In return, Darry held him underwater just long enough to make him regret it, dragged him up and demanded, “Say I’m your favorite brother,” only to dunk him again when Soda was too busy laughing to respond. Soda choked when Darry let him up for air again. 

“Okay, okay! You’re my favorite brother!” 

(He crossed his fingers underwater, where Darry couldn’t see.)

Their laughter echoed across the lake as they scrambled over each other to reach dry ground first. Darry dragged himself onto the embankment and hauled Soda up by the back of the shirt. They flopped in the dirt. Soaked clothes stuck to skin. Water trickled out of Soda’s hairline and into his eyes. He panted for breath, still laughing, listening to Darry beside him laughing too. Autumn hummed around them with a chorus of bullfrogs.

“That fish is long gone,” Darry said.

Soda grinned. “Good thing Pony ain’t here. Who knows what he’d write about all this.”

“Something scathing, for sure.”

They laughed, slightly winded. Soda propped himself up on his elbows. “Between you and me? I hate fishing.”

Darry snorted. “Shoot, no kiddin’? And here I thought you had a dramatic transformation since—” he paused to count on his fingers— “last week.”

“I just wanted to do something you like doing.”

“Ain’t my birthday,” Darry said mildly. He leaned back, resting his head like the dirt was a satin pillowcase, contentment puddling under him with the lake water. A few years ago, peace was as foreign to Darry as the concept of a future. Soda didn’t need birthday presents; seeing Darry happy was enough.

Emotion tangled on his tongue, so many things he wanted to say but didn’t have the words for. Instead:

“I’m twenty.”

Darry cracked an eye. “You just figuring that out?”

“I’m twenty years old.”

Something about his voice made Darry sit up, full attention now on Soda. “Shoot, little buddy, I don’t—”

“No, Dar, listen,” Soda cut him off. “I gotta say this or it’s gonna eat me alive.”

Darry settled back, shoulders tense. Soda chewed on his lip. Where to start? He’d thought about it for weeks, this conversation, with the tide of adulthood lapping at his feet. Yet there he sat, Darry staring him down, and didn’t know what to say. Words didn’t come as easy as they used to. Maybe that was the loss of childhood. 

“You know how we used to call you Superman?”

“Still do,” Darry said.

“It’s ‘cause you always seemed invincible, y’know? Even back then.”

A flicker of pain in Darry’s eyes. He scratched the back of his head, voice turned husky. “You know better than anyone that ain’t true.”

“Maybe not,” Soda said. “But I’m twenty now, and hell, Darry. I still feel twelve.”

Darry stood abruptly. He headed toward the cooler (still open, letting out cold air) with his back to his brother.

Soda grinned. “Running away ain’t gonna shut me up.”

“I ain’t running,” Darry complained. “I just— got something in my eye from the lake—”

“Bein’ twenty and all, I’ve been thinking.” Soda scrambled to his feet and followed Darry. “The stuff we went through when we were kids, the stuff you went through—hell, Darry, if I were in your shoes, I couldn’ta done it. Not then and not now. I’d up and die, carrying all that by myself.”

“I wasn’t by myself.” Darry rummaged through the cooler like his life depended on it, sorting cans of pepsi and beer, rearranging the hamburger patties. “I had you.”

“Ain’t the same.”

“It was to me.”

“Darry. Look at me.”

He did, rising slowly. Soda tugged on his arm until they stood face to face, autumn crackling around them in witness of their pasts and futures. Darry’s eyes were fractured glass, glimmering wet. So much history was written into the lines of that proud face, their entire childhood of struggles and griefs, mapped out for Soda to read. 

Darry Curtis was twenty years old when their world fell apart. He never complained, never looked for an out. He held the jagged pieces of their life together with scarred hands, and now, more than ever, Soda understood his older brother’s sacrifice. 

Darry Curtis was twenty-four years old. For the first time in half a decade, he didn’t look like an old man. Life had been cruel to him. But like the first thaw after an Oklahoma blizzard, it turned kind with time.

“Thank you,” Soda said softly. “For taking care of us.”

Darry shook his head. “I made so many mistakes, Sodapop. So many.”

“You gave up everything.”

“I did what needed doing.”

“You were a kid too.” Soda cupped his face. “Thank you for being to me and Pone the kind of person you also needed.”

He could pinpoint the exact moment Darry broke, saw the cracks in his resilience crumble to pieces. Darry didn’t fall apart. He just sort of slumped, nose-first into Soda’s shoulder, and stayed there while Soda patted his back.

“I’d do it again,” Darry mumbled wetly, voice muffled. His shoulders shook.

And maybe the lake was a window in time, because standing there, they were ten and fourteen again, going fishing with their dad. They were sixteen and twenty sitting by his coffin. Soda held his brother and thought of the life they made for themselves; Ponyboy, the best of their combined efforts, the triumph of the Curtis tragedy, now off to college; the house still stood; the lights still burned; the world didn’t end in broken glass on Tulsa tracks.

They were twenty and twenty-four, clutching each other on the opposite side of the precipice, with wounds stitched back together because the world didn’t end when they were teenagers, and wasn’t ending now. The future hovered over them. Limitless.

Golden.

“Thank you, Darry,” Soda said one last time. He smiled into his brother’s shoulder and squeezed tight. Even soaked to the skin, Darry was big and warm. Solid. Always solid. 

Darry squeezed back. He didn’t say anything, but Soda thought he smiled, too.