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It was never in the cards of any member of the Shepard family to get out of Tulsa.
They’d be stuck there; jobs they don’t like with gangs that would rather them dead and friends they can’t stand.
Or at least that’s how it is for Curly and Angela.
Tim isn’t stuck here. He’s just here. He likes it. Not Tulsa, but he likes being there. In a place where he’s got the type of respect you just can’t get anywhere else if you look like them.
He likes the violence and the fights and the pain because, at the end of the day, he’s the one left standing on top.
And sure, Curly will fight if you insult him or someone he likes and Angela has no problem siccing her brothers on a guy that gets handsy.
But there’s so much more to life. Curly was never the type to see the wider picture.
Angela tried to make him, over and over again, she tried to make him because she could. “Think of it. Think outside this dead-end town.”
Don’t you want more?
Her question rings out clear as day in his mind every time he gets a little too close to the border of town, every time he’s overtaken by the urge to run and run until he can’t anymore.
Sometimes he steps into the woods and pretends he’s not going back to the house on the East side that stinks of liquor and cigarette smoke. Sometimes, he steps away from the world and pretends he’s invincible.
But Curly Shepard was never meant to live past 18. If there’s one thing he’s sure of, it’s that.
Curly is 17 now, and the clock is ticking.
He didn’t let himself want, no matter how badly he could see it in Angela. She always said one day he’d see, one day he’d get it, one day he’d understand and he couldn’t. No matter how hard he tries, his mind can’t expand beyond Tulsa.
Until Ponyboy Curtis came along and shoved the doors of the big wide world right open with his talks of dreaming and getting out and New York and California and somewhere out of this goddamn state.
That’s around the time Curly started seeing a life for himself where his end isn’t a tiny, insignificant dot in Tulsa history. A boy who lived and died breathing in the culture of violence until he chokes, drowning in grease and blood.
Maybe there’s a world out there where he could be an insignificant dot somewhere else. Somewhere better.
Curly would never amount to much, but he wants to amount to more than what he will here.
There’s nothing left of Tulsa. It’ll just take and take and take.
So, Curly has to leave.
The sky is perfectly clear, letting the light from the moon and stars shine down onto the expanse of Tulsa.
Curly might have tried to find some sort of beauty in it if he wasn’t trying to be sneaky.
It makes it a lot harder to walk down the street and around the corner to where his car is parked without anyone seeing him.
With any luck, his family will think he’d snuck out late at night and gone on a self-destructive bender that’s long enough for him to get away.
He doesn’t know where he’s going.
All he knows is that he’s got sixty-two dollars in his pocket that he’d been saving for months and he doesn’t have anything left for him in this town.
He pulls the straps of his bag tight, holding them against his body almost like someone was going to come out of nowhere and take it from him.
For the first time in his life, as Curly catches sight of his car, he lets himself dream.
He quickens his steps, sticking to the very edge of the sidewalk, almost walking on people’s lawns so no one will see him. It’s a lot harder to rationalize Curly being missing if someone sees him leaving with a packed bag.
He darts from the minimal shadows of the sidewalk, over to the driver’s side door, about to open it up. Until he catches a glimpse of the inside of the car through the window.
More specifically, the person inside the car.
He lets go of the handle like it’d burned him, taking a step back and peering through the dark, trying to figure out who the fuck is sitting in the passenger seat.
When they don’t move, not even shifting their head to look at him, he lets out a breath and opens the door, slow enough that it won’t swing open and shake the car and wake the guy up.
Every muscle in his body is pulled tight, ready to reach out and hit him, if need be.
He carefully puts one knee on the seat, reaching over and moving the guy’s shoulder so he can see his face.
The light from the moon shines through the windshield, shining right onto the guy’s face.
It’s Ponyboy.
Curly lets go of his shoulder immediately, getting his other leg in the car so he’s kneeling on the seat. It makes the car bounce just enough that Pony wakes up, his eyes opening slowly as he looks around like it’s his first day on Earth.
“Pony?” he asks, and Pony’s eyes widen, snapping to his face and then down to the ground outside the car. Where his bag is.
“I knew it.” Pony says, in a soft tone, thick with conviction.
Curly pushes the bag to the side, out of Pony’s view. “Knew what?”
“You were gonna run away.”
Curly swallow harshly. “What are you talkin’ about, man. I was just goin’ for a drive.”
Pony lets out a huff of laughter. “It’s the middle of the night.”
Curly nods, slowly. “It is.”
“Where the hell would you be drivin’ to?”
Curly’s brain races a mile a minute to try and find something he can say that might throw Pony off his trail. All he can muster up is “…Places.”
Pony’s head falls forward. “Why?”
The tone almost makes a trickle of guilt climb up Curly’s spine, but he takes in a sharp breath and pushes it down.
“You of all people gotta know why I wanna leave this hellhole.”
Curly finally looks at Pony beyond just a shifting gaze.
He looks wrecked. There’s no other way to say it. No way around it or euphemism he can slap on it.
Pony looks, for all intents and purposes, like he just lost another friend.
“I do get it, I just… I don’t want you to leave.”
It makes a weird feeling shockingly like discomfort rush down his back. “How’d ya even know?”
“You’ve been actin’ all weird for the past week. And you didn’t come to school today and I got real worried so I was gonna swing by your house. And then I saw your car, and I knew.”
Curly snorts. “You should be an investigator.”
Pony doesn’t laugh. “Please, Curly.”
“I can’t stay here anymore, Pone. I can’t.”
“And what are you gonna do once you leave?”
Curly bites his lip, careful not to pull any of the skin off. He doesn’t know.
“What do you care?”
“I care because you’re my friend. And I don’t want you to get into a car and drive away so I’ll never see you again!”
That familiar old feeling that Curly usually tries to push down rises up. The feeling of being wanted.
Of it being Pony who wants him.
It almost makes him want to stay.
“I’m sorry.”
Pony brings his feet up to the seat, pulling his knees to his chest. “It’s been two years since I lost someone. I wanted to keep that streak.”
A jolt goes through Curly’s body, a feeling he can’t identify.
“I ain’t as important as your parents or either Dallas or Johnny or anything. And it ain’t like I’m dying.”
“But you’re leaving.”
And that’s what it always boils down to.
Should he stay in Tulsa, where there’s nothing for him? Or should he try and go somewhere else?
It almost hits Curly like a truck.
He has something to stay for.
He has someone to stay for.
Beyond just Angela and Tim. He has someone sitting right next to him to stay for.
Pony still has his knees pulled up to his chest, and Curly leans over,
Barely even reaching the halfway mark of the seat, but Pony still turns his head towards him.
It’s electric, when their lips meet, a spark that turns to body-flooding warmth.
It’s a flash of light that makes Curly feel, for a moment, like they’re both flying. Away from Tulsa.
Towards this beaming beacon of maybe that is somewhere away from this city.
Jesus, he’s starting to sound like Ponyboy.
But he means it, and when the moment finally ends, it seems like it’s been years.
When Curly opens his eyes, he sees tears welling up in Pony’s.
“Don’t leave, Curls. Please, just don’t leave.”
Curly knows that if he even tries to go past the city border now, without Pony by his side, it’ll feel like he’s getting torn apart.
He grabs his bag from the ground, throwing it into the backseat.
“One for the road?”
Pony wipes at his eyes furiously. “So, you’re leaving?”
Curly sighs, feeling the sixty-two dollars burning a hole in his pocket.
“Do you wanna get somethin’ to eat before I go?”
He’s not gonna have enough to get through the weeks or so it’ll take to get a job.
He could cut meals maybe or ration.
But, he knows he isn’t leaving. Not now.
Sure, he starts driving, but it’s not towards a future.
It’s toward a diner.
At least Pony is sitting next to him.