Revolution - An Outsiders / Sodapop Fanfic

Twelve

Our pre-rumble rituals were always fun and exciting. But not this time. We weren't fighting for fun tonight, we were fighting for justice and revenge. We were fighting for Sodapop, and in a way, I thought, we were fighting for Sydney too. And the more I thought about it, we were fighting for all of us. Every single person in the world, living, dead, or yet to be born, is somehow tied to this. This wasn't just a fight between greasers and socs. This was a fight against social injustice. And I realized that when we arrived at the lot.

It had been three months since we last met to fight over Johnny and Bob. I had the same sick feeling I had last time too, something bad was going to happen. While we were squaring each other up, before any fighting had actually started, two heads of long curly brown hair caught my attention.

"Wait a second," the taller one said calmly. It was Abbey.

She and Sydney walked up to us. They carefully stood right in the middle of the greasers and the socs.

Abbey looked at ease. She was perfectly calm in front of us battling greasers and socs. It occurred to me that she and Sydney had lived like this their whole lives. She didn't look like Abbey who had come back to Tulsa a few months ago, four years older, and with a lot more knowledge of the world. She looked like the Abbey who left four years ago; a little more innocent, and a lot more  open-minded.

"I know what you think. You think that what you're here fighting for is the most important thing in the world and you've got a little bit of faith that you're going to win because how could the other side's reason be better than yours?" Abbey said it as if it were a conversation instead of a lecture, "Well, I want you to look at me. I know that Syd and I have been hanging around the Curtis family, and Steve, and Two-Bit a lot since we came back. And I understand how that's lead you to believe that we've sided with the greasers now."

They've sided with us now? Weren't they always with us?

Now it was Sydney's turn to speak. She was just like Abbey. She looked exactly like she had four years ago; innocent, open-minded, and her eyes shone a little blue. She gathered what little hope she had tucked away for a time like this, when all the hope in her vanished.

"But we liked it so much better when we could bounce back and forth between you guys. I really liked being friends with all of you. Please just look at us for moment, not as greasers, or socs for that matter, but as Sydney and Abbey - two of your oldest friends."

And that's when it clicked. Everything made sense. Everyone loved Sydney and Abbey because everyone thought they were their own kind. To the socs, Sydney and Abbey were socs who hung out with greasers too often, just like to us they had been greasers who hung out with socs all the time. They were socs with a little less money but had too much to be a greaser and they were greasers with a little more money but not enough to be a soc. And they weren't like any of us at all. They didn't dress like greasers or socs, they had their own style. They viewed the world in their own way. They were their own people, a new label that I hadn't thought about. That's why they got along with greasers and socs so well. They were complete and utter hippies.

And then I thought about something else; that theme I wrote for English class. Everything I wrote in there, that was real. Why were we here fighting? It was as if when Sydney came back I had fallen back into my old greaser lifestyle.

I looked at the socs and they didn't look like socs anymore. They were people, just like me, and just like Darry, and Sydney, and Abbey, and Steve, and Two-Bit, and Soda, and Tim Shepard, and Dally, and Johnny, and Bob. We were all just people and there was a chance that one day we could all live together in this small town of Tulsa as equals. We could all go see movies, and play football, and go to university, and we could all go to a hill together and watch the sunset. I now knew that if anything ever was, this world that I had just dreamed up, that was gold.