A Girl in New York (Pre/Sequel to The Outsiders: A Girl in the Gang)

Chapter 16- Back and Gone

        Seeing as how I was only seven, I kind of had to rely on my parents to keep the apartment so I had a place to sleep and stash my food and clothes, but with the way things were going—now that Dally was in jail and couldn’t get large sums of money by ways I’d rather not know—I wouldn’t have been surprised if I was homeless within a few weeks.

        After trying to get information from our useless, stoned mother, note trying, I went down the hallway to mine and Dally’s room and climbed out on the fire escape, just sitting there for a while.

        I wasn’t going to worry about my big brother, I rarely saw him anyways so I just told myself that this wasn’t any different.  It worked, for the most part, but that stupid voice lingering in the back of my head kept me from completely convincing myself with my own lies.  I just shoved it out of my conscience and forced myself to forget about him.

        I could take care of myself if he could take care of himself, and that’s exactly what I did.  I didn’t let myself worry about my brother, because he was probably just fine in jail, or so my seven-year-old mind believed.

        Two days after our mother got that phone call, I came home from school and, avoiding my always-grumpy father—who was wandering around the house muttering something with, I noticed, his rifle clutched in one hand and a bottle of beer in the other—by heading straight to mine and Dally’s room.

        The minute I pushed open the door, which I’m pretty sure I hadn’t even closed that morning, I saw someone with their jean-jacket-clad back to me. For a second I thought someone had been dumb enough to try and break into our house in broad daylight with both of my druggie parents home, but then I recognized the shock of white-blond hair curling over the collar of the jacket.

        “Dally?  I thought you were in jail!” I exclaimed.

        He turned around with a slight smirk masking the surprise on his dirty face and asked, “How did you know I was in jail?”

        “I heard it around,” I answered simply, wondering what he would think of me eavesdropping on his so-called ‘friends’.

        “Oh,” he said with a non-committal nod.

        “Did you break out?” I asked, jumping to worst-scenario conclusions as a blossom of fear grew in the pit of my stomach at the thought of him breaking out of jail.

        He had stolen our father’s rifle, which he got arrested for supposedly, and I knew he was capable of killing someone.  Not to mention my brother was definitely strong enough and smart enough to break out of jail, though he was only ten.  At the time.

        “No.  Our good-for-nothing old man finally came and got me after he sobered up enough to understand what the police officer that came to the house told him.  Only after they called our house a million times. The dumb fuzz thought that I gave them the wrong number because apparently both of our parents are useless, they can’t even answer a phone,” Dally answered bitterly, his voice loud as he dissed our parents. 

        I didn’t really care, though I did agree with everything Dally said, except for I always had that nagging feeling in the back of my head that our father wouldn’t hesitate to hit us if he heard some of the things we said.

        It seemed like things went back to normal, or as normal as my life could be, after that, though the whole two days between seeing him rule didn’t apply anymore.  I kept telling myself not to worry, and sooner or later I almost entirely forgot about the fact that I had a brother.

        One day, about four months later—a little while after my eighth birthday, which was again forgotten even by me, until the day after when I looked at the date on a calendar at school—I came home in the afternoon after I had decided to skip the rest of my boring, too-easy, third grade classes for the day.

        I headed down the hall to mine and Dally’s room, intent on grabbing some food from our stash or going out to steal some more, and was surprised to find the room a lot emptier than it usually was.

        The cardboard box on Dally’s side of the room was empty except for an old worn-out T-shirt that was too small for him and full of holes, and some of the more preserved food, such as canned goods and dried foods, were gone from the box in the corner that we kept hidden under a ratty blanket so our parents wouldn’t find it and steal it rather than going out and buying more.

        I glanced around, looking for any signs of my big brother, and I realized that he was gone.  He had left me again, and for some reason, I knew that this time it was for good.