Susan Hinton - The Outsiders

“Asleep, I hope. I thought he was going to go to sleep shaving this morning and cut his throat. I had to push him to bed, but he was out like a light in a second.”

Darry’s hopes that Soda was asleep were immediately ruined, because he came running in, clad only in a pair of blue jeans.

“Hey, Ponyboy!” he yelped, and leaped for me, but Darry caught him.

“No rough stuff, little buddy.”

So Soda had to content himself with bouncing up and down on the bed and pounding on my shoulder.

“Gosh, but you were sick. You feel okay now?”

“I’m okay. Just a little hungry.”

“I should think you would be,” Darry said. “You wouldn’t eat anything most of the time you were sick. How’d you like some mushroom soup?”

I suddenly realized just how empty I was. “Man, I’d like that just fine.”

“I’ll go make some. Sodapop, take it easy with him, okay?”

Soda looked back at him indignantly. “You’d think I was going to challenge him to a track meet or something right off the bat.”

“Oh, no,” I groaned. “Track meet. I guess this just about puts me out of every race. I won’t be back in condition for the meets. And the coach was counting on me.”

“Golly, there’s always next year,” Soda said. Soda never has grasped the importance Darry and I put on athletics. Like he never has understood why we went all-out for studying. “Don’t sweat it about some track meet.”

“Soda,” I said suddenly. “What all did I say while I was delirious?”

“Oh, you thought you were in Windrixville most of the time. Then you kept saying that Johnny didn’t mean to kill that Soc. Hey, I didn’t know you didn’t like baloney.”

I went cold. “I don’t like it. I never liked it.”

Soda just looked at me. “You used to eat it. That’s why you wouldn’t eat anything while you were sick. You kept saying you didn’t like baloney, no matter what it was we were trying to get you to eat.”

“I don’t like it,” I repeated. “Soda, did I ask for Darry while I was sick?”

“Yeah, sure,” he said, looking at me strangely. “You asked for him and me both. Sometimes Mom and Dad. And for Johnny.”

“Oh. I thought maybe I didn’t ask for Darry. It was bugging me.”

Soda grinned. “Well, you did, so don’t worry. We stayed with you so much that the doctor told us we were going to end up in the hospital ourselves if we didn’t get some sleep. But we didn’t get any anyway.”

I took a good look at him. He looked completely worn out; there were circles under his eyes and he had a tense, tired look to him. Yet his dark eyes were still laughing and carefree and reckless.

“You look beat,” I said frankly. “I bet you ain’t had three hours sleep since Saturday night.”

He grinned but didn’t deny it. “Scoot over.” He crawled over me and flopped down and before Darry came back in with the soup we were both asleep.

IHAD TO STAY IN BED a whole week after that. That bugged me; I’m not the kind that can lie around looking at the ceiling all the time. I read most of the time, and drew pictures. One day I started flipping through one of Soda’s old yearbooks and came across a picture that seemed vaguely familiar. Not even when I read the name Robert Sheldon did it hit me who it was. And then I finally realized it was Bob. I took a real good long look at it.

The picture didn’t look a whole lot like the Bob I remembered, but nobody ever looks a whole lot like his picture in a yearbook anyway. He had been a sophomore that year — that would make him about eighteen when he died. Yeah, he was good-looking even then, with a grin that reminded me of Soda’s, a kind of reckless grin. He had been a handsome black-haired boy with dark eyes — maybe brown, like Soda’s, maybe dark-blue, like the Shepard boys’. Maybe he’d had black eyes. Like Johnny. I had never given Bob much thought — I hadn’t had time to think. But that day I wondered about him. What was he like?

I knew he liked to pick fights, had the usual Soc belief that living on the West Side made you Mr. Super-Tuff, looked good in dark wine-colored sweaters, and was proud of his rings. But what about the Bob Sheldon that Cherry Valance knew? She was a smart girl; she didn’t like him just because he was good-looking. Sweet and friendly, stands out from the crowd — that’s what she had said. A real person, the best buddy a guy ever had, kept trying to make somebody stop him — Randy had told me that. Did he have a kid brother who idolized him? Maybe a big brother who kept bugging him not to be so wild? His parents let him run wild — because they loved him too much or too little? Did they hate us now? I hoped they hated us, that they weren’t full of that pity-the-victims-of-environment junk the social workers kept handing Curly Shepard every time he got sent off to reform school. I’d rather have anybody’s hate than their pity. But, then, maybe they understood, like Cherry Valance. I looked at Bob’s picture and I could begin to see the person we had killed. A reckless, hot-tempered boy, cocky and scared stiff at the same time.

“Ponyboy.”

“Yeah?” I didn’t look up. I thought it was the doctor. He’d been coming over to see me almost every day, although he didn’t do much except talk to me.

“There’s a guy here to see you. Says he knows you.” Something in Darry’s voice made me look up, and his eyes were hard. “His name’s Randy.”

“Yeah, I know him,” I said.

“You want to see him?”

“Yeah.” I shrugged. “Sure, why not?”

A few guys from school had dropped by to see me; I have quite a few friends at school even if I am younger than most of them and don’t talk much. But that’s what they are — school friends, not buddies. I had been glad to see them, but it bothered me because we live in kind of a lousy neighborhood and our house isn’t real great. It’s run-down looking and everything, and the inside’s kind of poor-looking, too, even though for a bunch of boys we do a pretty good job of house-cleaning. Most of my friends at school come from good homes, not filthy-rich like the Socs, but middle-class, anyway. It was a funny thing — it bugged me about my friends seeing our house. But I couldn’t have cared less about what Randy thought.

“Hi, Ponyboy.” Randy looked uncomfortable standing in the doorway.

“Hi, Randy,” I said. “Have a seat if you can find one.” Books were lying all over everything. He pushed a couple off a chair and sat down.

“How you feeling? Cherry told me your name was on the school bulletin.”

“I’m okay. You can’t really miss my name on any kind of bulletin.”

He still looked uncomfortable, although he tried to grin.

“Wanna smoke?” I offered him a weed, but he shook his head. “No, thanks. Uh, Ponyboy, one reason I came here was to see if you were okay, but you — we — got to go see the judge tomorrow.”

“Yeah,” I said, lighting a cigarette. “I know. Hey, holler if you see one of my brothers coming. I’ll catch it for smoking in bed.”

“My dad says for me to tell the truth and nobody can get hurt. He’s kind of upset about all this. I mean, my dad’s a good guy and everything, better than most, and I kind of let him down, being mixed up in all this.”

I just looked at him. That was the dumbest remark I ever heard anyone make. He thought he was mixed up in this? He didn’t kill anyone, he didn’t get his head busted in a rumble, it wasn’t his buddy that was shot down under a street light. Besides, what did he have to lose? His old man was rich, he could pay whatever fine there was for being drunk and picking a fight.

“I wouldn’t mind getting fined,” Randy said, “but I feel lousy about the old man. And it’s the first time I’ve felt anything in a long time.”