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For someone who only ever sat down now, Johnny sure did feel like he was doing too much.
Since the church fire in Windrixville, he’d been confined to a wheelchair, and while the doctors all told him he was lucky just to be alive, Johnny wasn’t so sure about that. His parents kicked him out for good the second he got home, and he hadn’t even made it to the lot before Darry came rolling by in his big ole’ pickup truck to take him back to his place.
Now, he was sitting on the couch, tired as hell and bored out of his mind, staring listlessly at the television and wishing those two things were all that was wrong with him.
“What’s wrong?”
Damn Ponyboy and how well he knew him. Johnny could’ve fooled anyone else, except for Dally, of course, with that, but no, it had to be Pony who had just walked into the living room. It couldn’t have been any one of the countless other people that frequented the Curtis household. Not Two-Bit, or Angela Shepherd, or fucking Buck Merril—
Johnny glanced at the folded-up wheelchair leaning against the side of the couch.
“I wish I could just leave here. Go somewhere better.”
Dally scoffed. When did Dally get in here? Had he been in the room this whole time?
“Leave? That might be the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard you say! Where would you go? How would you get there? Why do you even want to go in the first place?”
“I don’t belong here,” Johnny whispered. “Y’all know that. I shouldn’t even be alive.”
“Don’t say that,” Dally snapped immediately. For once, Johnny didn’t listen. The Curtises had been trying to get him to stand up for himself for ages. Based on Ponyboy’s wide, horror-stricken eyes, he was sure this wasn’t what they’d had in mind when he’d agreed to try.
“I don’t,” he insisted. “I suck at school. No one likes me. I can’t do anything useful, and now I can’t even walk.”
“You don’t have to be useful,” Pony began, but Johnny couldn’t force himself to stop and listen. He was too far down his spiral to stop now, even if he desperately wished he could just shut up and be normal. He never could, though, could he? He just couldn’t do what was expected of him. That was why Ponyboy and Dally had wound up in the hospital. That was why Johnny would never use his legs again. That was why—
“This whole mess wouldn’t have even happened if I hadn’t killed that boy. I killed him, Dally, and now everything’s gone to shit. I just made it all worse. I always make things worse.”
“Johnny, no!” Pony wailed, making him flinch away from both the noise and the look on his face. He couldn’t even find the courage to look his brother in the eyes. God, he was pathetic.
“Not even my own parents can make themselves love me,” he whispered, wrapping his arms around the back of his knees and squeezing into a tight ball. He couldn’t disappear, so he had to content himself with becoming as small as physically possible.
“You don’t think that,” Dally said breathlessly. “Johnny, tell me you don’t actually think that. Your parents are two pieces of shit. They can’t love nothing or no one. It’s not you, Johnnycake, it never was.”
“They used to love each other,” Johnny shot back. “They tell me all the time. They used to love each other, they used to be happy, and then I came along and ruined all that just like I ruin everything!”
“Stop!” Pony screamed. Johnny’s head snapped up to find two watery green eyes meeting his own. “Just . . . stop.”
For a moment, silence overtook the room. Then, Ponyboy continued.
“Johnny, you’re family. Family ain’t supposed to be useful, or charming, or smart, or anything else! Family is just there. Like how we were there four months ago.” A traitorous chill ran down his spine at the mention of his jumping, but funnily enough Pony didn’t look sorry. “Like how you were there for me at the fountain.”
“I killed someone, Ponyboy.”
“You saved me. I’d be dead right now if it weren’t for you, Johnny, honest. They were gonna kill me. They wanted to, I was already unconscious, and no one else was coming to help. I think—” he let out a heavy sigh. “I think someone was always meant to die that night. And without you there, it would’ve been me.”
Pony rested his head on Johnny’s knee, and even though the doctors said he’d never walk again he swore that he could feel it.
“Please don’t go away, Johnny,” he begged, “I don’t think I could take it if I lost one more person.”
Oh.
He hadn’t thought about that. Of course it’d affect Ponyboy if he wasn’t there. He couldn’t just leave—that would devastate him! It didn’t matter what he thought. It didn’t matter what he felt. He couldn’t leave these poor people to grieve for someone else. Their family was strong, stronger than most, but who’s to say something like that wouldn’t be what finally broke it apart?
“Okay,” he said. “I’ll stay, I promise.”
Pony sighed and leaned into him more, so Johnny knew he’d replied with the right thing. Dally, on the other hand, just continued to look at him with an expression in his eyes that he couldn’t quite name.
“We love you, Johnny,” Ponyboy told him. “We all do. So much. You—” he hiccuped, making Johnny realize that he was crying even more than he’d thought he was. “You can’t leave. I won’t let you.” He wrapped his arms around Johnny’s waist and squeezed him tight.
“Well, shoot,” Johnny responded. “I guess I ain’t even gonna leave this couch, huh?”
Pony sniffled and shook his head, but Johnny could just barely see a little grin peeking out on his face.
Just for that, he decided, he would be here to stay.