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It had been three days since Darry and Soda got the call.
One day, he’d wonder just why it was a call—shouldn’t the police department be more kind towards two children who didn’t even know they needed to grieve yet? Soda hadn’t taken it well. To be fair, neither had Darry, but his brother was near catatonic with no end in sight. It was bad enough watching the gang all come and go like there were eggshells in the threshold, but seeing someone as effervescent as his name dulled to nothingness hurt him in a way he’d never be able to fully describe.
But he couldn’t let himself linger on Soda, no matter how much he wanted to, because if he wanted custody he needed to prove he could handle it. And that meant he needed to work. It meant he needed to leave the house nearly every damn morning of the week and drive across those stupid, awful train tracks to get on a roof and work himself to the bone.
Weeks passed on, and it was just more of the same. Darry could see himself becoming hard and jaded in the mirror. Every time he shaved, his eyes grew more dull, but he couldn’t dwell on it because he had more important people to attend to. Besides, it was worth it. It had to be worth it, because it was wearing him away bit by bit and Darry just couldn’t handle all of his suffering being for nothing.
But he could take it, and he would take it. For the only family he had left, he’d take anything.
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Soda knew things would be different after the accident, but he didn’t think all that change would extend to his brother. Darry was like a different person now—always angry at him for taking too long to walk home or not finishing all his homework when those things had been fine before. And really, he understood why that wasn’t the same with Darry as it was with his parents . . . but Darry never used to yell at him or make him feel like he was invisible when he did things right.
His big brother used to be so soft; now his eyes were like pieces of ice. His hands were worn and calloused, and he never complained about anything but Soda.
Soda, who felt the pressure of perfection build up in him day by day. Soda, who would never be what Darry so desperately needed him to be. Soda, who decided that if he couldn’t be perfect, he might as well be the opposite.
Soda, who decided to sneak out and go drinking, only coming back when the sun peeked its head over the distant horizon.
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“Where have you been?”
Soda looked up to see Darry sitting on his bed, arms crossed, looking pissed. He was so dead. He was so, so dead. For some reason, that thought was funny enough to make him giggle.
“Stop laughing, Sodapop. What were you thinking?”
“I’m thinking you should get off my ass!” Soda snapped. “I’m tired! I wanna go to bed. It’s fine. You used to sneak out all the time.”
“Yeah, before the state was constantly on our asses about every little thing? What would you have done if someone saw you? God, Soda, you’d get whisked off to a boy’s home fast enough to make your head spin!”
“So what?” he asked, head already pounding from the yelling.
“So what? So what? Sodapop Patrick Curtis, do you have any idea what you’re sayin’ to me right now?” Darry’s voice rose in tandem with his anger. “Are you actually telling me that you’d rather be in a boy’s home than here with everything you know and love?”
“Maybe I am!” Soda shouted back. “You’re never around the house anymore, so it’s not like I’d be seeing you any less!” He pushed Darry off the bed with all his might, feeling a sick sort of satisfaction as he watched him go crashing to the ground.
“I am working to keep you under my roof!”
“Your roof! Since when was this your roof?”
“Since four months ago when I was the one who took custody of you!”
“What the hell happened to you, Darry? You used to be my brother!”
“I can’t be your brother!” Darry screamed. “I gotta be your guardian! I gotta work a job! I gotta get up and clean this damn house every day, an’ I gotta cook you meals ‘cause no one else is there to do it! I gotta go to sleep face down on the fucking table working on the bills an’ get up before anyone else notices! No one else is there to do it anymore. It’s all me. It all falls on me, and if I want us to stay together I just gotta take it. So no, Soda, I can’t be your brother. I have to be everything else instead.”
His chest was heaving with the effort it had taken just to speak. Soda stared at him like he’d seen a ghost.
“What—Darry,” he stammered. “I—God, you’re so stupid, you—I—God dammit!”
“What?” Darry asked, curling in on himself and making a broken noise akin to laughter of all things. “It’s all true. Ain’t no one but me left to do it.”
“Will you shut up for two seconds and listen to me?” Soda cried, lifting his chin up. “Look, I know we don’t have Mom and Dad anymore, and I—they’re never coming back. We’re never gonna get them back. But I’m still here, and so’s the rest of the gang—and I’m almost an adult! I can help you! I’ll start workin’ full time at the DX—Heck, I basically do that anyway.”
“Soda, no,” Darry pleaded. “You know they never would’ve let you—”
“—But they’re not here.” Sodapop whispered, eyes boring a hole into the ground. “They’re not here.”
It was a statement as gentle as it was cruel.
Darry’s eyes burned; he hiccuped and hid his face in his hands. Soda pulled them away and scooted closer. Before he could protest, he’d cradled his big brother’s head between his hands and set it in his lap, running his hands through choppy brown hair. When had Darry tried to give himself a haircut? Soda couldn’t even remember the last time he’d looked him in the eyes.
“Like it or not, we’re in this together, Dar. That means I take some of the burden too. Even if you don’t want me to. Especially if you don’t want me to.”
A high-pitched, nearly inhuman noise forced its way out of Darry. He’d hit his breaking point. Soda could only bow his own head down and hope he’d be enough to keep them from falling apart completely.
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He called his boss and dropped out of school the next day. It wasn’t as much of an issue with their social worker as Darry had been worried about; Soda was more than old enough to drop out, and his grades had been just as bad before their parents’ deaths as they were afterwards. And as much as he knew Darry loathed all of it, Sodapop also knew it was the right thing for him to do. His brother was home more. He started smiling every once in a while.
Soda was happy.
He never would have made it to college anyway—he didn’t have the grades for a scholarship, and no East Side family had the money to send a kid to college when they were certain to fail. Maybe if he was more like Darry, things would be different. But he wasn’t, and they weren’t. He could easily make do with what he had.
Finally, they were settling into their own warped version of normal.
Of course something had to go and ruin it all.
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“You can’t just replace me!”
“Pepsi, I swear that ain’t what I meant, I—”
Soda stormed into his room, slamming the door shut hard enough to make the whole house quiver. A foster kid? What the hell was Darry thinking? Was Sodapop not enough for him?
Darry knocked on the door. Soda ignored it.
He knocked harder.
“You can’t come in!” Soda shouted through his tears.
The knocking stopped.
But the door opened.
“Go away!” he cried, turning to face the wall. Darry didn’t need to see him like this. He didn’t need another reason to—
“I won’t come in. But I won’t go away, Sodapop.”
He risked a glance over his shoulder. There, in the threshold, his big brother stood, one hand on the doorknob with a helpless, pleading look in his eyes. Soda whipped his head back around, guilt gnawing at his stomach.
Darry took a deep breath. “You’re irreplaceable.”
He stayed silent.
“I mean it. I couldn’t ask for a better brother. You’ve given up so much for me, even before Mom and Dad, and I can’t thank you enough for that. This whole idea—that ain’t what it’s about.”
“What is it about, then?” Soda snapped, wiping at his nose.
“There are children out there who don’t have you. They don’t have anyone. And going through what we went through . . .” he sighed. “I can’t bear the thought of letting some poor kid go and deal with that all alone when we could be there helping them.”
Darry took one step closer, then another. Soda didn’t stop him.
“But I ain’t gonna make that decision without you, Pepsi-Cola. If you don’t want to, then I’ll drop it. I’ll never bring it up again. I want to help—but not if it costs me you. Never if it costs me you.”
Sodapop let out a heavy sigh.
“It just—it hurts so much, Dar, and I know there are so many kids out there who are just as bad off as we are . . . but I lost my brother, too, and I just got you back . . .”
Darry put a hand on his shoulder and gently squeezed his neck. “You won’t, I promise. No matter what happens, I’ll never leave. You will never lose me again.”
Soda shook his head. “You can’t promise that. You don’t know that.”
He sighed.
“You’re right. I can’t know that.” Soda let out a broken little sob at the admission. Darry continued. “But I do know that I won’t leave today—and I probably won’t be leavin’ tomorrow, either.”
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His name was Ponyboy, and he’d turned fourteen less than a month ago. Both of his parents had died in a freak accident, just like Soda and Darry’s. He had no other family, and he’d lived just a town over.
The poor kid was completely alone in the world.
Technically, Darry was the only foster parent, but Sodapop attended all the meetings with his social worker anyway. He knew without a doubt that both of them would be taking care of him no matter what the law said. He needed to be in on the process from the start.
In all honesty, Soda wasn’t even sure how Darry had managed to get the state to let him foster another kid—he was just shy of six months over twenty, unmarried, and lived on the East Side. But his big brother had always been an unstoppable force of miracles. The Curtises had grown up on impossible odds, so why should this time be any different?
It took a lot longer than both of them expected to get all the paperwork done. To their credit, the social workers did everything possible on their side to expedite the process—it was just inherently, agonizingly slow. He knew it was for the safety of the kids. He knew not everyone would be as kind and good of a guardian as Darry strived to be, and that the state had to be sure their home was even capable of housing another child.
“Just think about it,” Darry had told him after he’d complained about it over dinner one night. “None of those social workers knew us personally. We know we’re trustworthy, but they don’t. And the last thing anyone there wants to do is hurt that poor kid even more.”
Soda knew he was right, but he still hated every minute of time that he knew Ponyboy was spending curled up in some boy’s home, grieving all by himself.
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Soda looked at his schedule and wanted to scream.
Of course the one day he’d needed the afternoon off was the day his boss scheduled him for a double. Why wouldn’t it be? It wasn’t like there was a new household addition for him to meet or anything, right? He tried everything, but there was no one to trade shifts with and no time off for him to use—Sodapop just had to accept that he’d be coming home late that day and wouldn’t be able to meet Ponyboy at the front door like he’d hoped.
Darry took the news much better than he did, but that might have just been because he wasn’t the one who had to miss the first meeting.
“Maybe it’ll be good for him to meet us one at a time, y’know?” Darry said, scrubbing away at a particularly stubborn grease spot on his favorite pan. “I’ll bet it would be pretty overwhelming to have to remember two names at once.”
“I don’t care if he forgets my name,” Soda replied, moping.
“It’s only an hour, right? That first part will probably be all boring legal stuff anyway.”
“I’d still rather be there,” he grumbled.
“I know, Pepsi. I know.”
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Sodapop’s first thought upon seeing Ponyboy was oh, he’s perfect.
The kid was perpetually hunched in on himself like he was carrying the weight of the world (and heck, he probably was), but Soda could tell that the light hadn’t fully left him yet. There was a mere half hour between him getting home and Darry finishing dinner, which was more than enough time for him to silently beg his brother to let him color the food, but his efforts were in vain. Unfortunately, Ponyboy’s first meal with them would have to be normally colored.
He still swiped some food dye for later, though.
After dinner, Pony basically went straight to bed—a little disappointing, but Soda refused to let it show. This wasn’t about him, and today had to have been really hard on the little guy.
Darry watched the door down the hall click quietly shut. “I hope he won’t get too cold at night,” he whispered.
Soda nudged his shoulder.
“We gotta finish cleaning up.”
The brothers stayed closer to each other than they would have on a normal night. Both noticed, but neither complained; the proximity was both soothing and necessary. Soda only separated himself when it was time for them to go to sleep—still, the door to Darry’s room stayed cracked open instead of resting in its usual closed position.
When he thought his brother wasn’t looking, Darry pressed his face into the worn fabric of their dad’s old sweatshirt. If Soda had to guess, he too was praying that they were doing the right thing. What if all they did was make this poor kid’s life even worse?
But then he thought about the way Ponyboy’s eyes had quietly lit up during dinner, how the kid had giggled softly at Soda’s antics. No matter how nervous he was—no matter how nervous they both were—Soda and Darry had the power to help someone when he needed it most. They couldn’t afford to take that for granted.
And if everything with Pony somehow got royally screwed up, he supposed they’d just have to move through life with one more burden of guilt to bear.
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Sodapop jerked awake to the sound of screaming. Before he even knew it wasn’t a dream, he was out of bed and rushing to the hall, whipping his head toward Darry’s room—but Darry was already sprinting to the only empty room in the house.
No, shit, it wasn’t empty anymore!
He snapped back into focus as Darry threw the door open. Ponyboy could be in danger, and they were his guardians. Soda couldn’t just stand around and wait for someone else to handle it.
“Are you hurt? Ponyboy, look at me! Are you hurt?” Darry shouted, voice fearful in a way he hadn’t heard in a long time.
Sodapop made it into the room just in time to see the kid shake his head, making him let out a short-lived sigh of relief. Pony was clearly in a panic, near hyperventilating as Darry lowered his volume a bit. Maybe he’d had some kind of night terror? He’d read a paragraph or two about those a few weeks ago.
It seemed like Darry had just asked a question, because Ponyboy was in hysterics trying to force out an answer. After a few seconds of painful-sounding wheezes, he gave up and just shook his head.
“Take your time,” Soda said. “It’s okay.”
“I—I’m sorry,” the kid stammered. “It—that’s never—I don’t—”
Darry placed a tentative hand on his back as he made another futile attempt to suck air into his lungs. “That’s okay. Just breathe for me, baby, breathe for me.”
“S’ not working!” Ponyboy wailed. Soda thought he might pass out—he was about two seconds away from sprinting to the phone and calling an ambulance. But then Darry put another hand on his shoulder and shifted Pony into his lap. He was going to try something. Soda stayed.
“C’mon, baby, you can do it,” Darry said. “Breathe with me.”
Pony’s breathing evened out like it was magic. It still took a few minutes before Sodapop was comfortable with abandoning the idea of calling anyone, but he got there.
“See, that wasn’t so bad,” Darry soothed. “You did great.” Soda met his gaze. You did great, he tried to say with his eyes. Their attention fell back to Ponyboy when he let out a soft, strained noise.
Soda took his hands. “You’re okay,” he told him. “Looks like you just had a bad dream. Just a dream, Ponyboy.” The kid nodded, squeezing his eyes shut.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered, fat tears rolling down his cheeks.
“No, none a’ that,” Sodapop said firmly. “We all got our bumps in the road to get over. We didn’t wanna do this ‘cause we thought it’d be easy for us. We wanna make it easier for you, okay?”
“ . . . okay.”
Pony turned his head slightly and looked Soda in the eyes. A fierce protectiveness washed over him, but he needed to be a source of comfort right now, so he just kept a hold of the kid’s hands and gave him a friendly smile. “There you are, honey,” he said, “Good to see you back with us.”
Darry moved one of his hands up to mess with Ponyboy’s hair in the same way he did with Soda when they were younger. He wasn’t quite sure why, but the sight made his heart burn.
“Feelin’ a little better?” Darry asked. Pony nodded, wrinkling his nose like he was trying not to yawn. Sodapop’s smile grew softer as he saw that his eyes were already drooping shut again. It seemed like he was falling right back asleep in Darry’s arms—and just a few minutes later, his unresponsiveness to his own name confirmed it.
Darry looked to Soda. “Little guy’s out like a light,” he remarked.
“Looks like it.” Ponyboy might have been fast asleep, but his hands still had a death grip on Soda’s own. He was sure he could maneuver them out without waking the kid, but . . . he looked so peaceful. What kind of person would he be to deny him that? “Scoot over, big brother. I’m too tired to go all the way back to my room.”
Darry huffed amusedly, and together they managed to lay all three of them down without much of a struggle.
The whole time, Soda made sure to never let go of Pony’s hands.