Cade & Curtis Summer (Ponyboy & Johnny)

First Summer Adventure

"Pony, I appreciate you's tryin' to do this." Johnny said, smiling a bit at me. Johnny was always the type who would agree to anything as long as it didn't get anyone else hurt or in trouble, and I wasn't going to let that happen anyways, I knew what I was doing. Mostly, anyways.

"Do you know of anywhere worth goin' to, Johnnycake?" I asked. He looked atme like he figured that I knew.

"Pony, I've never even been outta my own neighborhood. I mean, yeah, I've heard of places, but I've never been able to go to them." Poor Johnny, his parents wouldn't take him anywhere, they don't even want him in the house.

"C'mon." I said, bolting out the door. I could hear Johnny a little while behind me, he was never the fastest runner. I looked around atthe possibilities that lied ahead, but I couldn't see anything that looked worth my time. Most of the stuff here was small or run down businesses tryin' to make some money by advertisin' their stuff everywhere. Then I saw it, a big abandoned storage facility.

It didn't look like much, but who knows what could be in there? Old storage, valuables, people? Okay, maybe not the last one, but I bet the other two things were in there as sure as my name is Ponyboy Curtis. I ran up to the boarded up and chained door.

"Pony!" Johnny said tiredly as he ran up beside me, "What....what're you thinkin'?...." he said through faded breaths, looking up at the sign above the door that said, 'Keep Out, Closed Property'. I looked at the chain on the dopr, ain't no way we could bust through that. I started walking around the building, seeing if there was any possible ways of entering, and then I saw one, just a door that looks like someone forgot to board up.

I went closer to the door as tried turning the knob, locked. I kept tryin' it a few more times until the whole knob just fell off itself. I pushed open the door, Johnny coming up right behind me.

I coughed, there was dust everywhere and it was pretty dark. I held the door open for Johnny as we both went in. I took my shoe off and placed it beside the door so it wouldn't swing closed.

"Not much to do or see in here, is there?" Johnny said, looking around the empty space.

"Hey Johnny, look at this." I said, there was a spiral staircase in front of me, leading to god knows where. I jumped over the chain that was supposed to keep people from going up and started going up the stairs.

"Hey Pony, do you think that's the best idea?" Johnny said from the bottom of the stairs, he looked unsure of himself about going in.

"C'mon, Johnny. Don't be a wuss." I said as I motioned for him to follow me. He finally build up the courage to jump over the chain and to follow me up.

It was like a whole other room up there, it didn't even look like it was abandoned. It was painted a dark blue and the walls were in good shape except for a single crack down the wall. There were boxes of stuff scattered around the room and furniture was lined up as if it was a living room someone was moving into.

"Would ya look at that..." Johnny said, looking around the room with wonder in his voice. It was a real nice place, maybe we could even make this our own personal hangout, claim it as Greaser territory. It was actually kind of exciting.

I walked around the place, looking at boxes, "Think we should open these?" I asked, looking over at Johnny.

"Well....." he said, looking around. "Doesn't say anythin' anywhere that says we can't. Go ahead." He walked next to me, watching me tear open the lid of the box. It wasn't sealed very well, must not be anything good inside of it. Once I had the top ripped open, I began rummaging through the box.

There was nothing much in that particular box, just a lamp, a quilt, and a few books, nothing that interested me. I walked over to another box and started going through more to see if there actually was anything interesting in the boxes.

Turns out there was more in different boxes, we found expensive looking jewelery, some money, some weapons, even some old looking pictures.

"Hey Ponyboy," Johnny said from the other side of the room, "It's gettin' late, I don't want Darry or Soda to start worryin' about ya. Let's start heading home."

"Okay." I said, getting up with my valuables in my pockets. I looked out the single window in the room, the sky was starting to get dark, and Darry would be home pretty soon. Soda would be but he is probably out with either Sandy or Steve, maybe both.

"Do you really think it's okay for us to take all this stuff?" Johnny asked as we went down the spiral staircase down into the dark first floor of the storage facility.

"Finders keepers, besides, all the people who owned this stuff are probably dead anyways. We could use this stuff." I said as I stopped dead in my tracks. Something was wrong.

My shoe wasn't in front of the door anymore.