I HAD TO STAY IN BED a whole week after that. That bugged me; I'm not the kind that can lie around looking at the ceiling all the time.
I read most of the time, and drew pictures. One day I started flipping through one of Soda's old yearbooks and came across a picture that seemed vaguely familiar.
Not even when I read the name Robert Sheldon did it hit me who it was. And then I finally realized it was Bob.
I took a real good long look at it.
The picture didn't look a whole lot like the Bob I remembered, but nobody ever looks a whole lot like his picture in a yearbook anyway.
He had been a sophomore that year--- that would make him about eighteen when he died.
Yeah, he was good-looking even then, with a grin that reminded me of Soda's, a kind of reckless grin.
He had been a handsome black-haired boy with dark eyes--- maybe brown, like Soda's, maybe dark-blue, like the Shepard boys'.
Maybe he'd had black eyes. Like Johnny. I had never given Bob much thought--- I hadn't had time to think. But that day I wondered about him.
What was he like?
I knew he liked to pick fights, had the usual Soc belief that living on the West Side made you Mr. Super- Tuff, looked good in dark wine-colored sweaters, and was proud of his rings.
But what about the Bob Sheldon that Cherry Valance knew?
She was a smart girl; she didn't like him just because he was good- looking. Sweet and friendly, stands out from the crowd---
that's what she had said. A real person, the best buddy a guy ever had, kept trying to make somebody stop him---
Randy had told me that. Did he have a kid brother who idolized him?
Maybe a big brother who kept bugging him not to be so wild?
His parents let him run wild--- because they loved him too much or too little?
Did they hate us now?
I hoped they hated us, that they weren't full of that pity-the-victims-of-environment junk the social workers kept handing Curly Shepard every time he got sent off to reform school.
I'd rather have anybody's hate than their pity. But, then, maybe they understood, like Cherry Valance. I looked at Bob's picture and I could begin to see the person we had killed. A reckless, hot-tempered boy, cocky and scared stiff at the same time. "Ponyboy."
"Yeah?" I didn't look up. I thought it was the doctor. He'd been coming over to see me almost every day, although he didn't do much except talk to me.
"There's a guy here to see you. Says he knows you." Something in Darry's voice made me look up, and his eyes were hard. "His name's Randy."
"Yeah, I know him," I said.
"You want to see him?"
"Yeah." I shrugged. "Sure, why not?"
A few guys from school had dropped by to see me;
I have quite a few friends at school even if I am younger than most of them and don't talk much. But that's what they are--- school friends, not buddies.
I had been glad to see them, but it bothered me because we live in kind of a lousy neighborhood and our house isn't real great. It's run-down looking and everything, and the inside's kind of poor-looking, too, even though for a bunch of boys we do a pretty good job of house-cleaning.
Most of my friends at school come from good homes, not filthy rich like the Socs, but middle class, anyway. It was a funny thing--- it bugged me about my friends seeing our house.
