dallas winston, everybody knows you don't mess with dallas winston.
he's spent two years away from his home in new york city where he left his younger sister. up until late-november, 1964, no one was aware dallas had any siblings; until one night...
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MADELINE WINSTON
"hey, joan!" i call out as we pass in the hall, her pin-straight brunette hair tossed over her shoulders. "not coming to track today?"
"practice is cancelled!" she shakes her head.
"what!" i keep my eyes on her sinking frame in the swarm of the crowded hallway.
"yeah, too cold. gonna have to start indoor practice next week!"
i come to a standstill, everybody moving around me as i let it settle in my head that i no longer have to go to the locker room and can leave instead.
home, it flashes in my brain as i move my feet toward the exit of school, is not the curtis' anymore—for now. i have to go to dallas' again. i spent the night last night after my shift with soda at the DX.
soda was right, steve never showed up for work, and i haven't seen him since he made that scene with me yesterday morning. i'm starting to think i'll never get him to crawl on his knees and apologize to me.
i think he meant every word of it; he doesn't want me with soda, he doesn't trust me.
it's a bit of a blow because i thought we were friends, steve and me. i haven't grown as close with him as the others, but we got along well up until now.
i push open the metal doors, immediately walking into 46 degree weather. i tug my jacket tighter to my body, my breath almost taken right out of my lungs at the chill sucked down my throat.
joan was right, it is too cold to run in this. almost too cold to walk in it too, but i keep my eyes forward as i head down the sidewalk in the direction of buck's.
"—catch up with you later. madeline!"
my head whips at the sound of my name. behind me, dean leaves his friend's side, coming to mine instead.
with spring term starting after new years, our classes switched for the rest of the school year and i no longer have biology with dean, bobby, and jill—but i still see them around here and there, and i still sit with jill at lunch now that cherry's gotten on valerie's back to leave me alone ever since she apologized to me outside of dingo's.
"you walkin' home in this?" a white, straight-toothed smile stretches across dean's face as he looks down at me, his tan cheeks pink from the cold.
"yeah, are you not?" my lips chafe against the collar i have popped of the hand-me-down leather jacket darry gave me on my first day of junior year here a few months ago.
"i could give you a ride." he offers.
i open my mouth to respond, but a horn blaring behind us in the lot makes us spin on our heels, looking back at the commotion of a clusterfuck of vehicles trying to go this way and that. the honked horn came from a cherry red dodge charger—buck's car—and yelling through the windshield is dallas.
