Too Bad to Die [The Outsiders fanfiction]

1. The Freeze

The story of Dallas Winston began in a police station and ended in a parking lot.

In that time, he lived like ice. Cold and sharp. His hair was white-blond, his skin pale and blue-veined, his eyes an icicle hanging from a porch roof. In this way he was like a Soc. He didn't feel. That meant that no one knew him, not really. They knew the idea of him. They knew his name. But they didn't know, didn't even consider that he started off as water.

His story began when he froze.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

He hadn't wanted to hurt anyone.

His feet didn't touch the floor when he sat in this chair. The wood bit into his back and he tried to sit up straighter. He'd been told that good posture created a good first impression. He suspected that the blood staining the front of his shirt and his pale hands would counteract the posture.

Back then he was Dallas, not Dally. 'Dal' to the reasons he was here- those reasons being what adults called 'the wrong crowd'. He'd fallen in with The Wrong Crowd and was quickly discovering that falling included being trapped in a prison of crime and cigarette smoke, of which there was no escape.

At ten years old, Dallas was nauseated at the sight of blood. It wasn't until seven years later in a football field that this fear came back to him.

He was ten and his hands trembled with blood on them. Crying was against the law, according to his gang members. Dallas had said, don't we try to break laws? They had only laughed at him, cruelly, and said that this was their law and if he broke it he was out. They also said no whining and no caring about people.

He didn't know why he hadn't gotten out right then and there. If he had, he wouldn't be here swallowing back tears and trying to forget how to shed them.

But life was too short to regret.

He knew he was shaking and he decided that it was because the air conditioner was up so high. Up so damn high; he tested the curse word in his thoughts and found it was an accurate depiction of his current state. There were people talking outside of this room, saying things like minor and switchblade and not dead.

So he hadn't killed that man. Switchblades could kill people. He knew that. It wasn't even his switchblade. He wondered if Tim would be angry that Dallas had let that blade get confiscated by the cops. It was nice. Had it ever killed anyone?

His first rumble was a disaster.

A man came into the room. Sat down in the chair behind the desk opposite to Dallas. Looked at him, then down at some papers. Then back at Dallas.

"So." The man said.

"So..." Dallas said. He was trying to be cocky. He just sounded scared.

"Let's get this right. You're the kid who stabbed a guy."

Dallas thought that stabbed was an awfully ugly word for what he'd done. It'd been more of a jab. Stabbing entailed that the knife went deep, and stayed in. It must not have been that deep. He was only ten.

Still, he nodded slowly.

"Where are your parents, kid?"

He shrugged. His parents didn't care about him, so he didn't care about them. Maybe that was one of the reasons he fell in with The Wrong Crowd. They might have been Wrong, but they were better than home. Dallas found that the only way he could get his parents to pay attention to him was when he got in trouble. He was so starved for their gaze that he was willing to stab (no, jab, jab) someone for it.