Chapter Text
It’s a cold, dry Christmas Day morning. I drape a jean jacket over my pajamas and walk downstairs, heading to the kitchen for breakfast. I get there in time to see an egg hit the window, whose shells shatter upon impact. Soda and Steve are baking their definition of cookies. The scene provokes a disappointed sigh out of Darry, who’s reading the news in the living room.
“Hey, Pony’s up!” Two-Bit hollers from in front of the TV, a Mickey Mouse Christmas program running as its watcher chugs three beers at once. Darry raises a hand in greeting, not looking up from the paper. Soda and Steve seem to enjoy fighting over the vegetable oil more than my gloriously dull presence.
“Catch!” Two-Bit tosses me a Coke, which I fumble to catch and make sure to wait a good while before opening.
I set the can down on the coffee table and go for the presents. I find two this year. One’s wrapped nicely in festive paper—from my brothers, I immediately assume. It’s a set of notebooks and a new jean jacket. Soda probably helped a lot with the jacket. It gives anticipating-70’s energy.
The other present looks like someone tried their best but resigned to tape in the end. I get a nagging feeling in my stomach as soon as I see it.
The tag is in his handwriting—scrawny, edgy, attempting to mimic my own loops. The capital “P” in my name is bolded, my last name cramped into the corner. I can imagine him writing it in my mind now, in his own way that I would never experience ever again.
He probably did it in secret, probably sometime in the last few days before we ran away, probably when his parents were fighting, when he gets his most impulsive thoughts. He probably went over the “P” twice but decided that it wasn’t pretty enough and didn’t do it for the rest of the letters. He probably realized that he had run out of room, probably cursed himself for it. He probably debated if he should write my last name and decided to just wing it and squeezed it in at the end of the tag. He probably wanted to do the tag all over again, but that little one-by-two inch rectangle of paper was the only thing that he had at the time. And when he attached it to the present, he probably was afraid of how much I would hate it.
As I gingerly remove the wrapping paper under the flickering Christmas tree lights, I find an all-too-familiar book cover.
Gone With the Wind.
I can only wonder how he knew. We hadn’t even watched the movie at the drive-in at that time.
I find his letter at the bottom, nestled between two creases of wrapping paper.
Hey, Pony. Sorry I couldn’t get anything you mighta actually wanted. I just found this at the store and figured you’d like it. If you don’t like it I’ll return it for you, okay? Sorry again. Merry Christmas.
I read the note six times over, and on the sixth my fingers feel small wet spots on the paper.
“If you don’t like it I’ll return it for you,” he had written.
“Oh, Johnny,” I whisper under my breath, wiping at my eyes. “I love it.”