Too Bad to Die [The Outsiders fanfiction]

2. New York

He was eleven when his mother died.

She'd overdosed. While his father sold drugs, his mother took them. Heroin and drugstore aspirin. This was why, later, when he was offered syringes, he declined. He'd ruin his lungs with cigarettes and drink until he passed out, but his mother was a cautionary tale he never told but never forgot.

He was eleven when he left Tulsa. It was on a bus with bars on the windows and filled with his kind. What adults liked to call 'The Wrong Crowd'. A year ago, he'd been scared of them. Now, they were the only place he felt he belonged.

The bus was on its way to a reformatory. There was one closer to home, but Dallas's father chose New York. As far away from him as possible. Dallas had always wanted to go to New York. He just never thought he'd only see it from a glorified prison cell.

Reform school. Ha. Tim Shepard had already been there. Tim Shepard, the most dangerous preteen Dallas knew, had only gotten more dangerous in reform school.

Dallas checked his hair in the glass between the bars. He fidgeted, thinking if he could have one wish granted right now it would probably be for a cigarette. There were no convenience stores to rob in reform school. What's the point of a convenience store if it's not convenient, Dallas thought, but said nothing out loud. Someone was whistling in the back. It wasn't any song Dallas knew. Sounded country.

Really, if he could wish for anything, it would be his mother living. She, even drugged-up as she was, wouldn't have let him get sent away on this bus. She would have at least argued to keep him at home. Even if she hadn't won, at least Dallas would know someone cared.

How come every chair I sit in is so damn uncomfortable? He shifted again and sighed, letting his head fall back. His neck pressed against the hard plastic of the seat. It was cold against his skin.

He pushed down the inside part of him that was scared out of his mind. Re-froze. This was no time to be a sissy. He was done crying.

Still, a sliver of his cold-hardened heart yearned to be a normal eleven-year-old boy. One who went to normal school instead of prison with a slightly less harsh name. One who was kissed on the head by his living mother and called son by his loving father, a boy who wore his light hair short and liked playing baseball with his friends after his normal school day, a boy who the neighbors called nice, a boy who could grow up happy. A boy who someone loved.

But that was a stupid fantasy. He was real.

Harshly so.

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It took approximately three weeks from the time that Dallas Winston entered reform school for him to leave it. It was not an authorized departure. It involved kicking several teachers, breaking a window, and calling the principal a word that would get his mouth scrubbed with heavy duty cleaner had he been caught.

He laughed the whole time he was running away.

It was the last instance he'd laugh for a long time.

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New York wasn't like Tulsa.

It was big.

It was humming.

It was unforgiving.

People didn't talk right. Their voices were different and wrong...strangely terrifying. Their eyes were terrifying. They were just people.