Survive: A Darrel Curtis Love Story

Chapter 10

~ Chapter 10 ~

Ponyboy Curtis's Point of View

I WAS THE FIRST ONE up the next morning. Soda must have pulled my shoes and shirt off for me; I was still wearing my jeans. He must have been too sleepy to undress himself, though; he lay stretched out beside me fully clothed. I wiggled out from under his arm and pulled the blanket up over him, then went to take a shower.

Asleep, he looked a lot younger than going on-seventeen, but I had noticed that Johnny looked younger when he was asleep, too, so I figured everyone did. I don't know about Blair because I still don't know how old she is. Maybe people are younger when they are asleep.

The cop said she was nine when she ran away in '55. That would put her at 19, give or take a year depending on her birthday. She was about Darry's age. She'd fit right in. The only age we all didn't have now was 15. We go from 16 to 20 now, but Soda would be seventeen in a few months anyway. 

After my shower, I put on some clean clothes and spent 5 minutes or so hunting for a hint of beard on my face and mourning over my hair. That bum haircut made my ears stick out. Darry was still asleep when I went into the kitchen to fix breakfast. The first one up has to fix breakfast and the other two do the dishes. That's the rule around our house, and usually it's Darry who fixes breakfast and me and Soda who are left with the dishes. We don't mind, neither of us are as good of cooks as Darry anyway. I hunted through the icebox and found some eggs.

We all like our eggs done differently. I like them hard, Darry likes them in a bacon-and-tomato sandwich, and Sodapop eats his with grape jelly. All three of us like chocolate cake for breakfast. Mom had never allowed it with ham and eggs, but Darry let Soda and me talk him into it. We really didn't have to twist his arm; Darry loves chocolate cake as much as we do. Sodapop always makes sure there's some in the icebox every night and if there isn't he cooks one up real quick.

I like Darry's cakes better; Sodapop always puts too much sugar in the icing. I don't see how he stands jelly and eggs and chocolate cake all at once, but he seems to like it. Darry drinks black coffee, and Sodapop and I drink chocolate milk. We could have coffee if we wanted it, but we like chocolate milk. All three of us are crazy about chocolate stuff. Soda says if they ever make a chocolate cigarette I'll have it made.

"Anybody home?" a familiar voice called through the front screen, and Two-Bit and Steve came in. We always just stick our heads into each other's houses and holler "Hey" and walk in. Our front door is always unlocked in case one of the boys is hacked off at his parents and needs a place to layover and cool off. We never could tell who we'd find stretched out on the sofa in the morning. It was usually Steve, whose father told him about once a week to get out and never come back. It kind of bugs Steve, even if his old man does give him five or six bucks the next day to make up for it.

Or it might be Dally, who lived anywhere he could. Once we even found Tim Shepard, leader of the Shepard gang and far from his own turf, reading the morning paper in the armchair. He merely looked up, said "Hi," and strolled out without staying for breakfast. Two-Bit's mother warned us about burglars, but Darry, flexing his muscles so that they bulged like oversized baseballs, drawled that he wasn't afraid of any burglars and that we didn't really have anything worth taking.
He'd risk a robbery, he said, if it meant keeping one of the boys from blowing up and robbing a gas station or something. So the door was never locked.

Tonight, it was Johnny on the couch. 

"In here!" I yelled, forgetting that Darry, Johnny, and Sodapop were still asleep. "Don't slam the door."

They slammed the door, of course, and Two-Bit came running into the kitchen. He caught me by the upper arms and swung me around, ignoring the fact that I had two uncooked eggs in my hand.