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“Why do you sit like that?” Two-Bit asked, staring at Ponyboy, who was curled up on the couch like a cat and reading a book. Pony shrugged. At least, Two thought that’s what he was doing. It was hard to tell with him lounging around like a damn contortionist.
“It’s comfortable,” he replied after a moment of thinking.
“No way that’s comfortable.”
“You wanna try it?”
Two blanched.
“Hell no, kid. I think I’d pull at least four muscles just trying. It ain’t fit for an old man like me.”
Ponyboy tried to raise an eyebrow, but he really couldn’t do it very well. He wound up just raising both and hoping he got his point across.
“Suit yourself,” he said, turning back to his book.
-
“Hey, Superman! Can I borrow a pen?”
Darry narrowed his eyes at Steve.
“Why do you need one of my pens?”
Johnny watched the exchange curiously. Why was this being treated like some kind of interrogation? It was a pen. He’d seen Two-Bit waltz in and pluck one right out from behind Darry’s ear just two days ago- and yeah, he’d almost gotten his ass whooped for that stunt, but he was still allowed to leave with it, no questions necessary. To have Darry be this suspicious about a pen of all things was definitely weird. He zoned back into the conversation.
“I’m not gonna take it apart!”
“Last time you said that I ended up spending three hours scrubbing pen ink off of my couch cushions!”
“I was the one who cleaned it!” Steve groaned.
“And you did a shit job, so I had to go in after you an’ fix it. No pens. You’re only allowed pencils in my house and that is final.”
Pony, who had clearly just woken up, padded into the kitchen and immediately sighed.
“Steve, you break all the pens.”
“I do not!”
“You do too! An’ then you just leave ‘em there! An’ someone knocks it off a table roughhousing or somethin', and then I end up stepping on a tiny little spring in the middle of the night!”
“It’s them damn mechanic hands,” Darry added solemnly, “Can’t stop takin’ things apart even when they’re off the clock.”
“I can’t believe you two are agreeing on something for once and it’s being used against me!”
Steve threw his hands up in the air. Johnny held back a giggle, wrinkling his nose.
-
Dally’s first breakfast with the gang was in the spring of 1967. He’d slept at the house before, but never actually sat and ate with everyone, and the longer this breakfast went on the more he was starting to realize that may have been a good decision. Darry tossed napkins on the table, swatting Two-Bit’s hand with one as he reached for a slice of cake without a fork.
“Eggs before cake. You know the rules,” he reprimanded, ignoring the cries of “cake has eggs in it!” he received in protest.
“Eggs and grape jelly?” Pony grimaced. Dally swiveled his head over to where the brothers were. Ponyboy and Sodapop were sitting next to each other like always, and Soda was putting . . . grape jelly on top of his eggs like a fucking lunatic.
“Don’t knock it til ya try it,” Sodapop said, mixing his breakfast together serenely. His little brother wrinkled his nose so hard that everyone could see his front teeth.
“I ain’t trying that.”
Soda broke the wise act and elbowed him.
“Then don’t knock it.”
“Don’t try an’ talk him out of it,” Two said to Dally, scarfing down a piece of cake, “He’s been doin’ this since fifth grade.”
“I need energy for the day!” Soda exclaimed, mouth full of eggs.
Darry sighed.
“We do this every morning, you two . . . ”
“An’ it’s disgusting every morning!”
“Is not!”
“Is too!”
Darry gave up and sat down with a groan, serving himself a plate before anyone could take too much of his breakfast.
-
“So, do you always take your pills dry, or do you just do it around us to seem tuff?”
“Huh?” Dally did not look pleased at that question. Two-Bit did not seem to care.
“You just finished your water.”
“Yes.”
“ . . . and then you took that Aspirin.”
“Yes.”
“Do they just sit dry in your stomach? What’s goin’ on down there?”
After a moment where it seemed like Dally was more confused than anything else, he remembered that Two-Bit’s sole purpose in life was to make fun of him. He also remembered that he, too, had a smart mouth. With practiced ease, he lifted the hem of his shirt to show an absolutely gnarly scar on the right side of his abdomen.
“Can’t do it. Not since the accident,” he dropped casually. Two’s eyes bugged out of his head and he shut up right quick.
There was no accident. Dally had gotten a back-alley appendectomy when he was twelve. Cool as ever, he smoothed his shirt back down and shot his opponent a shit-eating grin.
“Oh, you asshole!”
Oh, no, it seemed like the ruse was up. How tragic.
. . . almost as tragic as the accident.
-
“Heads.”
Two-Bit caught the bottle cap the same way he would a coin and peeked down at it.
“Nope,” he said, “Tails.”
“Why’re you even lookin’?” Soda asked him, “Can’t you jus’ feel it? There’s only one end that pokes ya.”
Two shrugged, continuing to flip the bottle cap absentmindedly. “It builds more suspense that way. Plus, no one will think I’m cheating if they see that I’m right.”
“How would you cheat flipping one a’ those?” Pony chimed in, “You can’t load a bottle cap. You can barely even flip ‘em.”
“Well, with that attitude, maybe so. But there’s an art to a good flip, whether or not it’s a coin you’re using. An’ you know us Greasers. We don’t never have a coin to waste on gymnastics.”
“Yeah,” Soda huffed, “We can do the flipping part ourselves. Why do we even need a coin?”
“Next time we need to decide something, we should have Darry do a somersault and see which foot he lands on first,” Ponyboy said, staring at the ceiling.
“Nah,” Two replied, grinning and shaking his pockets, “If we did that, what would I ever use my collection of bottle caps for?”
-
Steve noticed something a little odd about Johnny. He kept wrinkling his nose. It was only in conversations, only when someone said something funny. Actually funny, not lame funny like Two-Bit could get when he was tryin’ too hard. Right now, him and Sodapop were taking turns poking fun at various things and people. Every time someone laughed and Johnny tried not to, it happened.
Soda told another joke. He wrinkled his nose again. It was so slight that Steve wouldn’t have noticed if he hadn’t already been keeping an eye on the kid. They’d all gotten a little roughed up in the last rumble, but Johnny had taken an especially rough hit to the face and got a gash so deep he almost needed stitches. He supposed that was why he was only noticing it now; Johnny always let himself smile around the gang unless it was for a good reason like this.
“Y’all know I ain’t supposed to be laughin’ right now,” he said, holding in a smile and wrinkling his nose, “It might open the cut and then Darry would get mad at ya.”
“Oh, we don’t want that,” Darry said from behind Steve, and everyone but Johnny (who was facing him) jumped a foot in the air. There was a little glimmer in his eye and a smile in his voice that made it clear he was joking around too- but the warning still freaked everyone out enough to make them keep a little quieter for a few minutes.
Pony started to recount a moment in class where someone had fallen asleep in front of a notoriously strict teacher. Steve turned away from Johnny as he wrinkled his nose again, mouth twitching up at the corners. He didn’t even think it was a conscious action.
Well, he didn’t want to draw any attention to it, and he certainly didn’t want it to stop, so Steve just shut his trap and minded his own business.
-
Darry flopped down onto the couch at nine thirty that night. Everyone was there. He let out a huge sigh as he got comfortable. It was nice to be off his feet for once, he thought as he closed his eyes.
He opened them again as Two-Bit flopped on top of him, sighing overdramatically.
“Really?” Darry deadpanned, raising an eyebrow even though there was no way Two could see it. He heard a quiet giggle that sounded suspiciously like Ponyboy from across the room.
“You always do it, Dar,” his little brother said lightly, “It’s kinda funny.”
“You’d do it too if you had to carry half your weight in roofing up a ladder all day,” he snarked.
“But we don’t. You do it for us.”
“You’re lucky I love you so much or I’d have your ass for that comment,” Darry said, smiling.
“Damn right I am,” Ponyboy responded before flopping onto the armchair with a huge, dramatic sigh.