Come Down From Your Fences

Chapter 36

He wished like crazy he hadn't noticed them, because once he did he couldn't tune them out. It was like it was the only sound in the world at that moment, drowning out even the deep breathing of his brother, fast asleep next to him. Crickets. Unbelievably loud and obnoxious crickets. Their chirping split through the still night air; an annoying cadence that seemed to bounce off the walls, amplifying to a volume that was impossible to ignore.

Since he was awake anyway, Ponyboy decided to use the time for something worthwhile. Staring at the ceiling, attempting to concentrate - he rifled through his thoughts, trying to come up with a beginning to his article that was due at the end of the week. Hell, at this point he'd settle for a middle or an end. This had never happened before - writer's block. It was frustrating, to say the least. Nothing was coming to him and he was a little afraid that nothing would.

Sighing, he turned on his side. It was the middle of the morning, dark as anything outside, the sunrise not due for several more hours. The window was open and a faint breeze stirred the thin curtains, but it didn't reach the bed. It was hot and that sure wasn't helping his restlessness.

He had no idea why his brain decided now would be a good time to desert him. All summer, like clockwork, he'd written an article a week. Turned them in early and spent the remainder of the week shadowing his editor Chris, trying to soak up as much as he could about working at a newspaper. Chris was great about letting him help out with just about anything. Layout was the coolest; deciding just where to put the pictures, how big to make the headlines, stuff like that. Chris even let him write a few of the headlines. They were corny and clichéd, but he always proudly showed them off to Soda and Darry when the paper arrived in the morning.

Cherry wasn't there as much as he was, but he did cross paths with her a couple of times a week. It was weird seeing her outside of school. For starters, she actually looked at him and talked to him. But that wasn't it, not really. She just seemed different away from the other kids and the rest of the world looking on. Calmer, maybe. Less reserved, less perfect. She smiled a lot - not that she didn't before. But these seemed to be genuine smiles, not like she was smiling just because she thought that was what was expected of her.

The whole Dally mess from a couple of weeks ago, though, started to put up a wall between them again. He wasn't surprised. She had come up to him about a week after she had called him to help her out. She asked about Dally, about how he was. It was all he could do to keep from laughing in her face - whether it would be in disbelief or defeat, he couldn't decide. Leave it to Dal to get a girl interested in him by breaking into her house.

Maybe he was reading too much into it. He had a tendency to do that. But there was something in the way she asked the question - kind of hesitantly, like she'd suddenly become painfully shy. Cherry Valance was anything but shy.

Closing his eyes, he tried willing sleep to come. The chirping grew louder, and he was sure he was going insane because he the sound now had a rhythm that bore a striking resemblance to that annoying song Wild Thing by the band with the name he could never remember. Punching his pillow into submission, he muttered a curse. Now - on top of the crickets, failed opening sentences to his article, and thoughts about Cherry Valance - he had the chorus to Wild Thing screaming in his head.

Finally admitting defeat, he stood up, grabbed his pillow and made his way down the hall to the family room. Maybe some TV would distract him. He realized fairly quickly that there was no television at this time of the morning. Every channel was off the air, either filled with snow or a test pattern. Turning down the volume, he left the TV on and decided on a channel with the snow. He sat heavily on the couch and flopped over, squishing his pillow beneath his head as he lay across the lumpy cushions. The flickering white light from the TV was strangely hypnotic and he felt his eyelids growing heavy.