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Ponyboy hasn’t touched a book in sixteen days.
That was probably a record, but he couldn’t be very sure. He stopped reading after mom and dad died. He just couldn’t remember how long he stopped reading for.
Maybe a couple days. Eventually, though, he was pulled right back into Tom’s Midnight Garden by Philippa Pearce like a fish on a hook. He felt drawn to it, reeled into the inky words on the pages, and enveloped in the loneliness and isolation that the main character—Tom Long—felt.
He was usually that way with books and movies. He just got it. He understood how abstract certain media was. He connected to the characters and the things they felt.
Soda didn’t really get it. Darry barely tried understanding. The guys didn’t care. That made media Pony’s own—something that existed, somewhat, entirely for him. Like a little secret only he knew of.
When he sunk, literature pulled him up. When he floated, sketching kept him up. When he drowned, films found him.
In a way, Ponyboy was used to being found.
Now he was lost.
Nothing was coming to find him.
Ponyboy was staring at the wall. He’s been staring at it since Soda climbed into bed a couple hours ago. This has become a habit as of late, and he doesn’t know how to cut it out.
“Quit doin’ that,” Soda had said yesterday night, when he came home from a late shift and Ponyboy was simply staring into a void, eyes wide and red with tear tracks across his cheeks. “It freaks me out, Pony. It ain’t you.”
And he was right. It wasn’t him. Ponyboy didn’t stare numbly at things. He looked. He observed. He thought.
He didn’t really think anymore. Not about anything important, at least. Only Johnny and Dally.
When funks like these occurred, he usually knew the solution. Crack open a new book. Watch a new movie. Draw a picture instead of doing homework. Take a stroll. Listen to whatever’s new on the radio.
None of those things were reeling him in.
He was sinking.
“Ponyboy?” Soda’s voice disrupted the stillness in the air, heavy with sleep. “What’re you doin’ awake?”
Pony couldn’t recall when, but he had tried his damned hardest to fall asleep hours ago. Sleep wasn’t coming—in fact, it was running further away from him.
“You’re doin’ that thing again, Pony,” Soda said, sitting up from where he was lying in their shared bed. “You’re starin’ at the wall again.”
Was he? Pony never really meant to, honest, but it just happened and he didn’t know how to stop. He was melting, staring at walls—melting into his comforter, through his bed frame, through the floorboards, through the ground. He was sinking. Nothing was coming to pull him back up.
Hands would reach out to him, sometimes. Not the hands of people, no—not usually. They were hands of his thoughts. Of things he loved.
Cigarettes. Drawing. Horses. Sodapop. Paul Newman movies. Oliver Twist. Books above his reading level. Chocolate cake. Poetry. Orange juice. Television. Pepsi.
They were anchors, in a way that anchors grounded the ships they were thrown from, so they wouldn’t float away.
Ponyboy was floating far, far away, drifting along the coast but never quite reaching it.
He used to be colorful, like all those things he loved. His hands used to be colorful and vibrant and abstract, like the hands of his anchors. His hands held the pencils he used with chewed erasers and teeth marks along the side. They held Soda tightly in the middle of the night when his nightmares were bigger than himself. They held shitty theatre popcorn that Darry thought was too overpriced.
They were scarred over now, red and burnt from the fire.
He was sinking.
“Ponyboy.”
Pony looked over, but he never turned his head fully. It was still fixed on the wall. Yet to move.
Soda had a disturbed, sleepless look to him. Eyes too wide. Eyebags too dark. Lips quivering like he was about to cry.
“Hm?”
“Pony, I’ve been callin’ you for a minute straight. You were just… lyin’ there. I was shaking you ‘n everything, and you just… weren’t answering.”
“Oh.”
“You looked dead, Pony.”
Pony kind of felt dead, if he had to be honest. Like a corpse rotting in a flowerbed. Sinking into the dirt and decomposing as life sprouted around him, weeds and all.
“Honey, look at me. Please.”
It felt like flowers, with their thorns and their leaves, were growing right out of his body, like he was just another pile of soil. Dandelions and daises blossomed out of his head, heart, and soul.
“Ponyboy.”
Soda’s voice cracked something awful, broken and hesitant, so Pony finally turned.
“Hm?”
Soda just gave him a weak look.
“Come here, baby,” he said, right above a whisper, gesturing for him like he used to do when they were kids.
Pony blinked slowly. The fog didn’t dissipate.
He sat up before climbing into Soda’s arms, and they slowly enveloped him in warmth and safety.
He still felt cold, somehow.
Soda stroked his hair slowly, in the way their mama used to do whenever one of them were having it rough.
Pony focused on the wall again. His eyes found the clock. It read 12:09 AM.
Ponyboy hasn’t touched a book in seventeen days.
That must’ve been a record.
He couldn’t remember when, but he suddenly found himself clinging onto Soda like a koala to a tree. He might’ve felt a little silly, if it had been a few months ago. If this was some alternate reality and the fire never happened, he would’ve been embarrassed, clinging onto Soda like that. Like he still needed him to chase away all the monsters that hid under his bed.
The monsters were bigger now, in different shapes and sizes. Some were wild and crazy and burning hot, like the fire in Windrixville. Some were of a white wolf with sharp canines and blue eyes, who snapped its teeth when approached. Some were the lump of blood and flesh in the lot, shriveled and crying and beaten to a pulp.
He had a right to cling to Soda. The monsters were a bit more aggressive nowadays.
Soda’s hand found his somewhere in the maze of blankets on their bed. He intertwined their fingers together and gave his hand three instinctive squeezes.
Ponyboy did not squeeze his hand back, even though he probably should’ve.
Instead, he started at the wall.
“Soda,” he said, eyes dry and unblinking, “I think my spark’s gone.”
Soda’s fingers traced the base of Pony’s hand, where the burn scars began. “Don’t say that, baby. It ain’t gone. It’s just… takin’ a paid week off or somethin’.”
He really hoped so. “You think it’ll come back?”
Soda thought for a moment, humming a long beat that rattled his chest. “I think so. It did when mom and dad died, didn’t it? Things were different, yeah, but it came back. In some way, at least. Took on a new form or something.”
It did take on a new form, kind of. His spark dimmed, sparkled less, grew up a little bit.
But it wasn’t gone. Not for good.
Soda’s fingers traced along his scarred skin, drawing small circles the size of quarters in the center of his palm.
“Your hands, Ponyboy,” his older brother said, eyes turned down and heavy with sleep, “They’re gonna be at work again. It probably ain’t gonna be tomorrow, or the day after, or the day after that. But they’re gonna write again. Draw again. Read again.”
Would they? It felt like the fire burned away all those things he knew and loved.
They used to create freely. Now they were scarred and burnt.
“I’m tired, Soda.”
“Then go to sleep.”
He really tried. He tried closing his eyes, counting sheep, and listing off five good things that happened that day, big or small.
Sleep never found him.
He stared at the wall until Soda’s breath went steady above him.
He was sinking.