A Boy Named Pony - A Sequel to East West Sunset

Chapter Thirty - Betty

I should have known - from the way his words had swallowed me whole, embalmed me in honey, and left me to the vultures saturated with sweetness - like sunkissed amber pulling an ancient insect into frozen eternity - that his lies would end up killing me.

I remember the good times so strongly. He was the soft, saccharine stillness before a summer storm, and he was the howling gale of its wild depths. He was that rumbling of thunder on the horizon, that earthy smell of approaching rain, and the terrifying splinters of lighting, the fierce scream, of a tossing tempest. 

The summer I was eleven, a tornado tore through my stepdad's hometown. It had come on suddenly. At one moment, the sky was clear; the next, as green as overripe spinach. I remember seeking shelter in the cellar, feeling my mother's arms around me and hearing her whispered prayers, as we ducked between shelves of preserves and cured ham. My stepdad's face was bleak. I realised that I had no idea what the world would look like once we emerged. Above us, the wind roared like a train passing overhead, and driving rain pummeled the Oklahoma prairie. The tornado carved a swath of destruction, two hundred feet wide in some places, for a length of two miles or more. In that cellar, we had no idea what to do, besides wait for nature to cease her wrath.

As I stood in the bitter December wind, nearly seven years later, I felt a similar helplessness swamp me again.

How could I have known? Even with my knowledge of storms, it never occured to me that someone could be as devastating as a twister and as soothing as the calm before it.

"Listen, you're going to be waiting out here a long time if you're expecting me to come in with you," Ponyboy growled. "Please just stay out of this."

"I won't."

"Betty Anne, you don't understand."

"You're right, I don't!" I retorted. "I don't understand why you're working with them. It's dangerous."

He snorted in derision. "Thank you, but I am fully capable of handling myself."

With his eyes narrowed and his jaw set, he no longer resembled the boy I'd fallen for. He looked hard and unreachable; I felt the gap split open between us, as I desperately clawed for a foothold before I fell into the void. 

"Please, Ponyboy, think about your future," I begged him.

"I am! I'm doing this for Darry!"

"Darry won't forgive you if you sacrifice your chance at a good life just for -"

"All along, everything I've done is to protect them and to protect you," Ponyboy nearly shouted. "I'm doing this to keep my family safe. Why can't you understand that?"

"Well, stop thinking about others for once! Think about you!" I cried.

"I am thinking about me! I'm thinking about what's best for my family!"

"No, you're clearly not thinking str-"

"Betty, you could never understand my life! You could never understand what causes me to make the choices I do! I watched two of my best friends die in front of me. I saw my brother thrown off a bridge and left for dead. I've had to testify at two murder trials to protect the people I've loved most. And now I'm having to listen to the girl I love tell me that I don't care."

"I'm not saying you don't care!" I sobbed desperately. "All I'm saying is that you need to go about it a different way!"

"You don't get to tell me how to live my life. I'm doing the best I know how."

"Is your best sacrificing your future? Lying to your brothers? Lying to me?" 

"I wouldn't have had to lie to you if you'd just trusted me in the first place!"

"Pony, you've never given me the chance! And I have trusted you! I trusted you when you said you'd change, when you said nothing was wrong. When you promised me you were taking care of yourself. But all along you were lying to me - not once have you realised that maybe, if you'd let me in a little, I could at least try to understand what you're going through!"

I was well and truly crying by then, gasping for breath like a fish out of water. I'm sure I looked foolish to the gang of men standing behind Pony. I saw their smirks flash in the dim streetlights, and the whites of their eyes roll with amusement. They thought this was so funny, a lover's spat of a high school couple. But I knew this was more than just a simple fight; it was the explosion of weeks of built-up tension, the corruption of me and Pony's entire relationship blowing up in our faces. The first flakes of an approaching snowstorm began to float down from the clouds high above.

"So what are you saying?" Pony's voice shook with barely restrained rage, thick with tears. "You have regrets now?"

I didn't know how to respond.

"Betty Anne, please. You can't say I don't care about you."

"I know you do," I whispered, staring at him through the drifting snowflakes. "I know you say you do. But, Pony, can't you understand - I can't trust you anymore. I don't think I ever truly could."

At these words, his brown eyes filled with such pain that I almost couldn't hold his gaze. The seconds ticked by, each one an agonising eternity, as I watched his heart break right in front of me. My own felt hollow in my chest. I was being cruel, I reproached myself, so cruel to hurt this boy who loved me, the boy who I loved. And I did love him so much; but I couldn't keep us tied to one another, not when our relationship was fundamentally flawed. Our trust in each other had well and truly broken.

"I'm sorry." The words were sharp for me to choke out. "I love you. I do. Please believe me."

His heartbroken eyes flashed once more, before he turned towards the gang again. "Goodbye, Betty Anne."

"Goodbye, Ponyboy."