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March 1st, 1968.
The date taunts him, glaring up at Ponyboy from his notebook. The clock ticks, and his teacher drones on, but all he can think about is Johnny. He would’ve been seventeen years old today. Only a year away from freedom of his parents forever, from getting out of that house.
At the end of the day it wouldn’t have mattered, really. Johnny would’ve stayed there anyway, kept going back because all he wanted in the world was for his parents to care. To love him, to be there for him—it didn’t matter how much the rest of the gang loved him. That was what he had wanted most. He was a dreamer, same as Pony. But Johnny Cade’s parents never changed. They never would.
Sometimes when he walks past the Cades’ house, Pony swears he sees a shadow looming by the front window, a figure on their tip-toes peeking in to see if it’s safe to go inside. He’ll blink, and that figure will be gone, but the imprints of converse sneakers in the dirt remain. Nobody in the neighborhood ever seems to notice. Nobody in the house seems to care, but Ponyboy does. He always will.
The bell rings, and Pony’s attention is pulled back to reality. He shoves everything on his desk into his backpack without a care in the world and takes a left turn out of the classroom door instead of a right. By the time he notices he’s gone the wrong way, he’s missed the first ten minutes of lunch.
He’s standing in front of Johnny’s old locker. There’s a chill in the air while Pony tries to remember the combination. The lock feels like ice under his fingers as he turns it. The door pops open.
Everything is still there, just as Johnny had left it. No one bothers to get his things from the hospital after he dies. Nobody bothers to empty out his locker.
Maybe that one’s on Pony. It’s been almost six months. He should’ve come by here sooner to look.
Johnny’s long-sleeve denim jacket is hanging up on the hook, just like it had been that Friday afternoon before they went to the drive-in. He’d left it there in favor of his favorite denim vest, the one Steve helped him cut the sleeves off and that Pony’s mother had helped him embroider. It had been beautiful, once; he’d gone to her for help in recreating a pattern he saw on a blanket he thinks his grandmother must’ve made. She’d let Johnny take the lead in the design, but made sure he was able to stitch it right. Now the vest was packed away in Pony’s closet, burnt and bloodied, a memory of what once was.
Pony pulls the jacket off the hook with shaking hands and holds it close. By some miracle, it still smells like his best friend. Like cigarettes and grease and something he can’t explain. For a moment, he truly feels like Johnny’s still here with him.
There’s more in the locker. A pack of cigarettes, some spare change—probably saving up for something, Pony guesses. Maybe lunch money he scraped together or won from a game of poker.
Pony pockets the change and tries not to think about the lump in his throat. He still owes Johnny for all those poker games he lost back at the church. He pockets the cigarettes, too—no reason to let them go to waste. He hears footsteps coming down the hall, somebody’s voice, but it’s all background noise to him when he sets his eyes on the only other thing in the locker: a sketch of Johnny himself.
Pony recognizes it, of course. He drew it ages ago. He’d ripped it out of his sketchbook and tossed it in the trash before anybody could see, but here it is, uncrumpled and taped to the back wall of Johnny’s locker behind where his jacket was.
Pony gently pulls it off the wall and wipes at his eyes with his sleeve. Some tuff greaser he is, crying in the school hallway, but honestly, it wouldn’t be the first time it’s happened to him in the last six months. Johnny was never supposed to see this, but here it is, in all its unfinished glory. The shading’s all off. It barely looks like him. But it’s here.
Wow.
What breaks him out of his stupor is a sound like a shrill laugh, or maybe a witch cackling, and something pulls at his shoulder, trying to turn him around and get his attention. He jabs his wrist into his eyes to dry them and prays it’s not noticeable when he turns. Angela Shepard is standing there, and Pony quickly crumples up the picture of Johnny and shoves it into his pocket.
“What?” He says, and maybe it comes out wrong, he doesn’t know. Angela looks annoyed, but he figures she’s usually annoyed, although… she doesn’t usually talk to him. Especially when her brothers aren’t around, and Pony doesn’t see Curly anywhere. Sure, he and Angela are friendly too, he’s known her forever, but he can’t possibly imagine that she’s just come up to him to ask if he’s okay because she saw him crying. The only time she’s ever done anything like that before was at his parents’ funeral.
The world comes back to life around him, and he realizes that, oh yeah. He’s at school. There’s a lot of other people gathered around them. He thinks he sees a few guys that he knows Angela hangs around with down the hall. Maybe she was asking if he’s okay? But a lot of people are looking at them right now, and he’s only just pulled his head out of the clouds (and shut Johnny’s locker door to face her).
“I said, we’re going to drive down the Ribbon tonight. Christ, can’t you hear?”
He stares blankly at her. It’s the first he’s heard of this.
“Huh?”
“Oh, you’re lucky you’re cute, Curtis.”
“I—what? I don’t want to go anywhere with you.”
It wasn’t supposed to come out the way it did. Clearly, Angela would agree, because there’s a look in her eye that he thinks might mean she’s genuinely hurt. Doesn’t she realize what day it is? Doesn’t she care that Pony’s been hurt so much worse?
There’s a cruel laugh from down the hall, and some tall greaser kid—a guy that Pony vaguely remembers Curly pointing out to him once as Angela’s boyfriend—turns and walks through the door to the stairwell. There’s another familiar-looking greaser right on his tail.
Pony blinks. For a second, he could’ve sworn that was—
“Dallas?”
Please, no. One's enough.
He only mumbles it, but Angela hears him. She tilts her head at him for just a second, then turns to look in the same direction. When she turns back, her eyes are soft, just for a second, and she whispers, “That wasn’t—Ponyboy, are you…?”
Pony shrugs helplessly, and Angela watches him sadly for just a second. Sometimes he forgets that she and her brothers knew Dally almost as well as his own gang did… almost.
Angela frowns. Pony thinks maybe it was hope that flickered in her eyes when she had turned to look, but he can’t place the look she’s giving him now. Confusion? Pity, maybe?
But then she shakes off the memory and her whole demeanor changes.
“I cannot believe you,” Angela snarls at him. She says a couple other things, too, before storming away down the hall with her friends, but Pony still isn’t sure what he did wrong.
Everyone around them starts laughing and whispering, and Pony feels like this must be some big inside joke he’s not a part of. He pulls on Johnny’s denim jacket and heads towards the door to the parking lot, deciding that Angela’s apparent issues with him just aren’t worth worrying about… and that he’s had enough school for today. Maybe he’ll get lucky and Darry will cut him a break for skipping when he remembers what day it is.
When Ponyboy gets home, he digs out his old sketchbook, and does his best to flatten out the crumpled portrait of his best friend, and tapes it onto the next blank page. The lights in his bedroom flicker, and he thinks maybe, just maybe, Johnny might approve.