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The kid looks bad.
Shit, no, worse than that – he looks downright awful.
Soda hasn’t seen anything like this before. Fights on the East Side can get rough, and anyone worth a damn in a rumble doesn’t walk away without their share of cuts and bruises. But there are rules. There are limits, there are things you just don’t do in a fair match. You don’t bring heaters or a blade to a skin fight. You don’t break bones other than a nose or a finger, if you can help it. And you definitely don’t leave anyone looking like Johnny Cade does now.
If Soda didn’t know better, he’d say that every inch of Johnny’s face is covered in blood. It’s everywhere, spilling from the litter of wounds that now mark his cheeks, his nose, his chin, his forehead. Red stains his clothes just like it stains Soda’s hands as he carefully lifts his friend from the ground and holds him close.
“Johnny? Johnnycakes?”
There’s no answer, and Soda’s heart stops. No, no, no, this can’t be happening, not to Johnny…
In an act of desperation, he shakes the boy in his arms gently. A prayer.
Please, let him wake up.
“...Soda?”
The word is barely audible, but it’s there, and that’s all Soda needs.
“Yeah, it’s me, kid. I’m right here,” he murmurs quietly in return, making sure not to jostle Johnny too roughly in the midst of his sheer relief. The task isn’t difficult, but any joy he feels at Johnny’s response is quickly replaced by absolute horror as he takes in his friend’s condition.
Johnny doesn’t even look like Johnny. He barely opens his eyes, and the wide gash leaking the most blood somehow makes him look even younger than he already does. His face is swollen almost beyond recognition. His shirt and jeans are ripped to shreds, just barely clinging to his body.
It’s wrong, all of it. It’s terrible and nightmarish and devastating and Soda wants to sob like the bawl baby he is. But he can’t, he won’t, because Johnny needs him now.
“They –” Johnny tries to get out, but Soda quickly shushes him with another tiny shake.
“Hey, don’t talk now, alright? It’s over, Johnnycake, you don’t gotta think about it no more,” he insists. “You’re gonna be okay.”
He’s lying. But damn, he hopes he’s not.
Soda registers Ponyboy standing stock still behind him, and without having to turn around he can feel the way his little brother shakes. Damn it, Pony shouldn’t have to see this. But there’s no sending him away now, not when it’s his best friend bleeding in Soda’s arms.
“There was a whole bunch of ‘em…in a blue Mustang,” Johnny chokes out as he ignores Soda’s pleas to stop. “I got so scared, Soda…”
And if that isn’t a punch to the gut.
Johnny is nervous on a good day and anxious as all get out on a bad one. He’s got a right to be with the way his father clobbers him to kingdom come and back. The kid’s always looking over his shoulder, but he does it so no one else has to do it for him. Any of the gang would happily take up an invitation to give good old Mr. Cade a taste of his own medicine (Soda himself included), but Johnny never offers one. He doesn’t want anyone fighting on his behalf.
Soda knows the kid would rather disappear into a hole in the ground than say he needs help. So to hear him outright admit that he’s scared? It must be worse than ever.
“Johnny –”
“They didn’t stop, I kept begging them but they wouldn’t stop,” Johnny’s all-out crying now, big tears mixing with the blood still caking his face. Soda distantly realizes this is the first time he’s ever seen Johnny cry like this. “Why wouldn’t they stop?”
Someone lets out a vicious curse behind them. Dally.
Soda quickly glances up to see the gang gathered around them, summoned as though by the pull of tragedy. Steve still clutches Johnny’s jacket in his hand, his face stone. Two-Bit and Ponyboy have matching sets of tears in their eyes, and Dally looks like he’s going to be sick. Or punch a Soc’s lights out. Or both. Even Darry is there, a hand frozen over his mouth as he lingers at the back of the group. It speaks to the awful magnitude of the situation that Soda’s big brother isn’t taking charge now.
“It’s okay, Johnnycakes, it’s okay. They’re gone now and we ain’t gonna let them hurt’cha again, yeah?” Soda continues to dole out reassurances, but it feels useless when Johnny only weeps harder. His entire body trembles so hard Soda’s half afraid the kid’s gonna vibrate right out of his arms.
“I…I was lookin’ for the football, wanted to practice…” Johnny’s chest rattles as he coughs, and tiny red droplets land on Soda’s DX shirt. He doesn’t move to wipe them away. “Thought we had it in the lot last…”
The Tulsa heat is sweltering, but Soda freezes all over. Johnny’s right, they left the football in the lot. Soda left the football in the lot.
He and Johnny had been tossing the ball around a few days ago after Dally’d accused the two of them of having the worst aim in the neighborhood. They’d laughed, and Johnny even gave old Dallas a shove for his trouble, but Soda hadn’t missed the way the other boy’s shoulders sagged under the weight of embarrassment. So he dragged Johnny out to the lot later that afternoon and they threw the gang’s ratty football between them until Ponyboy showed up to whisk Johnny away to the drive-in. Soda lingered after the kids had gone to get in a few more shots under his belt, and then he’d been late for his shift, and he’d just let the ball lying where it was, and…
And now Johnny Cade looks like he might die right here in Soda’s shaking arms.
Oh, glory, he doesn’t know what to do, he isn’t prepared for this, he doesn’t know what to do. Soda has never, ever had to look at the eyes of someone he loves and see so much raw pain it nearly suffocates him. But now his throat is starting to close up, and his lashes burn dangerously, and Soda is certain his desperate whispers of “just keep breathing” aren’t just for Johnny. All he can do is make sure his friend stays alive, right? Isn’t that what’s most important now?
No one else moves around him; the roots of horror keep them planted to the spot. Soda can’t blame them. He’s not sure when his own limbs will start working again. It’s as though time will stop here forever, impossibly frozen, until Johnny says what he needs to say.
“There was four of ‘em, in the Mustang. I tried to run, but they got me, Soda. I couldn’t run fast enough and they got me.” Johnny shakes his head mournfully, his bottom lip trembling with misplaced guilt. Of course the kid thinks it’s on him. His pop would probably say the same thing.
“No, no no no, it ain’t your fault, Johns, not at all,” Soda smooths sweaty bangs back from a clammy forehead as tenderly as he can. It’s the best thing – the only thing – he can think of. It’s not nearly enough.
His wired and anxious (terrifiedterrifiedterrified) brain can barely work right to begin with, and now it’s failing to come up with any sort of plan of action when it matters most. Not for the first time, Soda wishes he was smarter. Better. More like Darry. Maybe if Darry had gotten to Johnny first, things wouldn’t be as bad as they are now…
No. No, it wouldn’t matter. Johnny would still look like this whether it was Darry or Soda or Two-Bit or Dally holding him, because none of them had been there to stop the Socs. Each and every one of them have failed him, this smallest member of their gang who’s as sweet as they come and gets enough of a beating at home from his flesh and blood. Johnny is the last kid on earth to deserve this, and his friends should have been by his side to protect him. They’ve completely and irrevocably let him down, and each of them will spend the rest of their lives attempting to somehow make it up to him. But they never will. Soda’s an idiot through and through, and even he knows that.
“One - one of ‘em had a buncha rings on,” Johnny whimpers, his voice painfully soft as he recollects what Soda is sure must be the most horrifying moment of his sixteen years. He wants the kid to stop putting himself back through hell, but Johnny seems determined to tell them the whole story. What else can Soda do but let him?
He looks at Johnny’s face, where the blood still seeps from the dozens of cuts and scrapes that mar him. Soda wants to puke; it was the rings that tore him up so bad. Those bastards couldn’t even do Johnny Cade the decency of taking their rings off first.
“Shh, Johnnycakes, you don’t need to keep relivin’ it. Please.” Soda tries again, but his friend just continues to cry. Normally you couldn’t pay Johnny a shiny nickel to open his mouth, but now he’s louder than ever before. Soda hates it with all his might.
“And they…they said they was gonna kill me.”
Silence. A collective, simultaneous intake of breath. And then –
“What?” Dallas practically roars from behind them. Johnny flinches in Soda’s arms, and Soda pulls him closer to his chest instinctively. The same way he’d do with Ponyboy. Oh, shit, what if it had been Ponyboy?
“It’s just Dally. You’re okay, you’re okay, it’s okay.” Soda wishes the words didn’t roll off his tongue so easily, but he’s grateful for it anyway. Looks like his little brother’s nightmares have been preparing him for something.
“They were laughing, said it’d be fun to watch me bleed out…said it didn’t matter if I was dead ‘cause I’m…I’m a greaser…”
Every muscle in Soda’s body is suddenly on fire, burning him up from the inside out where they’d been frozen still only a second before. He’s been doing his damndest not to cry while Johnny does; his friend deserves to have every ounce of attention he can give. But this is too much. The air shifts around them as they all inhale the rancid smoke that is this day. Soda can feel the way it curls around their lungs and squeezes. Someone out there wants Johnny Cade dead.
Their Johnny, the kid who helps Darry sew up the holes in Pony’s jeans. Who babysits Two-Bit’s sister and takes driving lessons from Steve. Johnny is the only one who gives it right back to Dallas Winston as good as he gets it, and he prefers to be attached at the hip to Ponyboy more often than not. He’s the quiet, driving force that holds them all together and he doesn’t even know, damn it. Johnny Cade is so important. He’s important to all of them. He’s important to Soda.
How could anyone look at Johnny and not see the world? Worse yet, how could they look at him and see nothing at all?
“That ain’t true, Johnny. It ain’t, I swear,” Soda’s voice shakes dangerously. He’s going to break if he’s not careful. He’ll snap in half right down the middle and be no good to no one, especially Johnny.
A breath.
Keep it together. You can do it.
You have to do it.
For Johnny.
“We need you. The guys and me, we need you more than anything.” It’s the truth, and not one of them says a word against it. “You’re what keeps us goin’, bud.”
“But Soda –” Johnny tries to force out another sentence before his chest collapses from the effort and he breaks down in another bout of fresh tears. The sound is deafening, unnatural and unwelcome. Soda would do anything, anything in the world, to make sure Johnny never makes that sound again.
Finally, the kid gasps shallowly. It sounds like it’s only enough air to fill his lungs, not enough to keep him living.
“It ain’t just me…they wanted.” The words are pained, but Soda has a feeling that it isn’t just because Johnny’s hurt all over. There’s a deeper fear hidden behind each syllable he speaks. Soda isn’t ready to find out why.
Actually, he’d prefer to erase every moment of the past ten minutes from his mind entirely and live the rest of his life in the sweet, terrible ignorance of never knowing what happened today. It’s a secret he’ll take to his grave, though, because he’d rather meet his maker right this second than abandon this boy. Soda only lets himself be a coward in his own head.
Johnny reaches up and pulls Soda close by the collar. His grip is gentle, of course it is, but there’s still urgency in the way his fingers clasp around the cheap fabric. He only wants Soda to hear his next words. He’s desperate for it to be just Soda and no one else.
“They said they’d find Pony, too.”
Shit.
“W-what?” Now it’s Soda’s voice that catches; it snags on the edge of pure horror. That can’t be right.
Johnny must have heard wrong, he was getting beat on anyway, maybe he just didn’t understand what the Socs really said. Yeah, that has to be it, because there can’t be a reality that exists where Soda’s precious baby brother is the one covered in blood like Johnny is now. No, this world is bad enough. But Soda’s never been very good at lying to himself.
“You gotta make sure they don’t get him too, Soda, you gotta,” Johnny cries unabashedly. It’s like he doesn’t even register where he is or even that the rest of the gang surrounds him. His dark eyes are locked on Soda with more conviction than any of them ever knew he had, and that’s how Soda knows Johnny heard every word those assholes said. That’s how he knows Johnny will never forget them for as long as he lives.
“They won’t. We’ll keep him safe, Johns. You and me, yeah? Nothing’s gonna happen to him,” Soda murmurs, resisting the urge to glance behind him to make sure Ponyboy’s still there. As much as he hates to admit it – and he hates, hates, hates to admit it – Soda can’t deny that the threat makes sense. It makes his stomach churn and his eyes well up, but he knows that if the Socs really wanted to put the scare on Johnny, the idea of Ponyboy in his place would do the trick like nothing else.
There’s nothing and no one Johnny cares about more than Pony; it’s clear as day to anyone who takes a second to look. The calm affection settled on Johnny’s features when Ponyboy reads out loud to him on the porch, the way he listens with his full attention when Pony’s rambling on about the movie he saw last week, the gentle tone he uses when calming the other boy down from an anxious spiral. Soda sees it all, he’s well aware of what Ponyboy means to Johnny.
And if someone as stupid as Soda knows how connected the two of them are, then he doesn’t doubt that the Socs have noticed it too. After all, the two of them somehow always find themselves on the West Side too often for comfort. Soda’s heard Darry grumble about it till he’s blue in the face.
“The guy with the…the rings…he said it while the other ones were hittin’ me. He said once they were done with me they’d go hunt Pony down too, for…for fun.”
Suddenly, Soda can’t breathe. That can’t be true. It just can’t. Nothing is ever supposed to happen to Ponyboy. It’s the unspoken rule among the gang – keep Pony safe, no matter what. Two-Bit says it’s been like that since the kid was old enough to walk.
But then. Then.
They were supposed to protect Johnny, too, as much as they could. And look where that got them.
“Those bastards aren’t gettin’ anywhere near Pony. You hear me, Johnny?”
Now there’s someone kneeling on Johnny’s other side, and Soda looks up into Steve’s blazing, angry eyes. He’s shaking just like Johnny. The bloodstained denim jacket is lying on the ground next to him.
“And they ain’t touchin’ you again, either. Got it? Never.” Steve practically spits fire. His words are supposed to be comforting, Soda knows, but Johnny just keeps on shaking his head.
“No, no. They said they’d be back, they said they’d come back and finish me off. They said I’m not safe, that Pony’s not safe, that none of us are, none of us!” he wails. “They’re gonna come back!”
Shit, Johnny’s getting loud. His cries pierce like stones through Soda’s glass heart. He wonders if anyone, in the history of everything, has ever sounded this sad.
“Shh, Johns, stop it. Stop.” Soda begs. It’s abhorrently selfish, but he just can’t listen to this anymore. “They ain’t comin’ back, I swear it. And even if they do, we’ll be here this time. Right, Steve?”
“We’ll kill ‘em.” Steve replies instantly. He’s scowling like he’ll never stop, but there’s still somehow traces of gentleness in his expression as he looks at Johnny. This kid always manages to bring out the best in everyone.
Soda smiles gratefully at his best friend as he absently pushes back Johnny’s bangs over and over again. It’s a repetitive, soothing gesture – though Soda thinks he may only be trying to soothe himself. Johnny sure as hell isn’t getting anything out of it. His face is still screwed up in pain and fear and shame, all of which look out of place on his boyish features. They’ve all seen Johnny in bad shape before. But not like this.
“They’re gonna find me, Soda,” Johnny insists through sobs. “They’re gonna find Pony.”
Gravel crunches behind them; Ponyboy’s trying to get closer. Panic flares hot and dangerous in Soda’s chest. Under no circumstances can his little brother know what Johnny just said.
Soda finds Darry’s weary stare and pleads with him silently. And damn it, he’s never been more grateful to have grown up with Darry in his entire life, because the older boy simply nods as he pulls Pony back. The youngest looks betrayed, but thankfully stays safely tucked against Darry’s chest. It’s the only relief Soda can feel right now.
He needs the rest of him to focus on Johnny Cade.
“Johnny. Listen to me, okay?”
Shallow breaths. Small cries.
“I am so, so, sorry this happened to you. So fucking sorry.” Soda whispers. His voice is hardly anything but tremors, but it doesn’t matter. “But we’re here now. I’m here now. And I promise you, none of us are ever going to let it happen again. Not to you, not to Ponyboy, not any of us. I swear to you, it’s over.”
He’s not really sure what he’s promising. There are still going to be rumbles. There will still be brawls, and fistfights, and the Socs will still be hunting them like wolves because that’s just how their life is. Nothing any of them can do will stop that.
But what Soda does know, what he’s sure of with every breath he takes alongside his brothers and his friends and Johnny right here in his arms is that he’d take on the entire army that is the West Side if it means none of them will hurt like this. His family will never bleed like this again as long as he’s around. And Soda’s not going anywhere. He doesn’t want to.
Johnny searches his face as he speaks, still trembling and still looking much, much younger than sixteen. But then his eyes squeeze shut, and something in his expression shifts, and he nods. He’s crying, but he nods. Johnny believes him.
“Okay. Okay,” Soda lets out a broken laugh. A tear finally falls from his lashes onto Johnny’s cheek.
“Soda.” Darry calls from behind him. Ponyboy’s still pressed to his side, shaking just as bad as Johnny, like they’re sharing each other’s pain. Hell. Knowing those two, they probably are. “We gotta get him home.”
Soda swallows hard and sniffs. “Yeah.”
He carefully adjusts his hold on Johnny and stands slowly, making sure the kid doesn’t hurt any more than he already does. “You just gotta hang on a little longer, Appleseed, you hear me?”
Johnny gives the faintest nod as his eyelids flutter. Ponyboy’s by his side the minute Soda’s fully upright, taking his best friend’s hand in his and holding on for dear life. No one tries to stop him, not even Darry.
“I’m here, Johnny. You’re gonna be okay,” Pony murmurs. There’s so much love and sincerity and heartbreak in his words; Soda’s long-standing belief that his little brother is meant to be a poet is reaffirmed right then and there.
They begin their trek back to the Curtis home in somber silence. Soda leads the way as he cradles Johnny, Ponyboy sticking right by his side. Darry and Two-Bit talk quietly just behind them, and Steve takes up the rear by his lonesome. Dally’s gone. No one can quite pinpoint exactly when he left or where he might be off to, but Soda’s got a guess.
Tomorrow, they’ll have to decide what to do. How to keep Johnny and Pony safe, how to repay the Socs for what they’ve done, how to move forward. Tomorrow, they’ll have to reckon with all the ways in which their world has changed. Because this has changed things, Soda can feel it.
He doesn’t think Johnny Cade will ever be the same.
But today, for now, they’ll go back home. They’ll clean the mess of blood from Johnny’s face. They’ll patch up his cuts and help him change his clothes and give him a place to sleep tonight that’s free from fear, even if it can’t keep all the nightmares at bay.
Maybe it’s not enough. Maybe all they can give will never be enough. But Soda never wants to give any less.
Because now he’s seen the cost.