Yellow, Pink, and Orange

Chapter 9

When I woke my I was sore all over, my head hurt, and my body felt like it was on fire. The cold stone floor didn't help one bit, though. Pony was still sleeping, he needed it. I sat up and looked around the old church. The gun that Dally gave me laid next to me. I reached in too my back pocket and took out the 50 dollars that Dally also gave us. Might as well go and get some supplies at a store. If they even have stores up here. I took of my jean jacket and put it over Ponyboy to help keep him warm. Then I wrote 'Went to get supplies. Be back soon. J.C.' in the dust of the floor.

While walking down the steep hill I took my time to appreciate the scenery. I felt like if I didn't then I would forget what freedom felt like, if I were caught. Or if I turned myself in. The guilty started to consume me the more I thought about what happened, but that's all I could think about.

When I got to the little town not many people were out, but the people who were looked at me strangely. I don't blame them though. I don't belong here. The ones who stared the most though were the little kids from the school across the "street". They looked like that saw a ghost.

The little shop they had didn't have a lot but they had the necessities. Two-Bit would have loved the fact that everything was out in the open with not a lot "security". As I picked up the stuff I thought would be good for us, I passed the medicine section then I thought of something.

The walk back was much more difficult and felt longer than the way there. Mostly due to the fact that I was carrying a bag of about 10 things, and I wasn't feeling great to begin with.

When I finally got to the top I did the signature whistle for "Who's there?". Pony returned it then darted out the door falling off the steps. He tried to play it off by propping himself up on his elbows and smiling at me.

"Hey, Johnny. Fancy meetin' you here."

I looked down at him."I swear, Ponyboy, you're gettin' to act more like Two-Bit every day."

"Who's acting?" 

He got up and asked, "What'd you get?"

"Come on inside. Dally told us to stay inside."

We went in. I dusted off a table with my jacket and started taking things out of the sack and lining them up neatly. "A week's supply of baloney, two loaves of bread,a box of matches..." 

Pony started taking things out the sack himself.

"Wheee!" He sat down on a dusty chair and stared. "A paperback copy of Gone with the Wind! How'd you know I always wanted one?"

"I remembered you sayin' something about it once. And me and you went to see that movie, 'member? I thought you could maybe read it out loud and help kill time or something."

"Gee, thanks." 

"Peroxide? A deck of cards..." He gave me a worried look."Johnny, you ain't thinking of..."

I sat down and pulled out my knife. "We're gonna cut our hair, and you're gonna bleach yours." I looked down at the floor. We needed to do this. "They'll have our descriptions in the paper. We can't fit 'em."

"Oh, no!" Pony touched his hair with pride."No, Johnny, not my hair!"

"We'd have to anyway if we got caught. You know the first thing the judge does is make you get a haircut"

"I don't see why," he said sourly. "Dally could just as easily mug somebody, with short hair."

"I don't know either--- it's just a way of trying to break us. They can't really do anything to guys like Curly Shepard or Tim; they've had about everything done to them. And they can't take anything away from them because they don't have anything in the first place. So they cut their hair."