"baby, please don't cry"
Candice "Candy Cane" Marshall hasn't seen or talked to any of her friends in a long time. Dallas and Johnny are gone and she's terrified to face the fact that Steve and Sodapop may have met their fates in Vietnam. But when t...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
After settling into my hotel room in New York and making sure all my papers were in order, I called a cab to take me to my grandparents' house. They knew I was coming over--I'd called them a few weeks before to let them know-- but they had no idea why I was heading over.
The entire nine-minute cab ride from my hotel to their place, all I could think about was how this was even going to pan out. I knew they were going to freak; Soda and I didn't have a great chance of gaining guardianship now, what with me having no job; and oh, god, to think about my grandmother's mystery illness on top of it all. I was a walking, talking, emotional wreck.
"We're here," the cabbie said, breaking me out of my thoughts.
"Oh, thanks," I said, passing him a twenty dollar bill and slipping out of the cab.
As people passed me on the sidewalk, I realized how different New York was from Tulsa. I remembered Dallas and how he said that the cities were nothing alike. They didn't have rumbles here like we used to back home, and their gang wars were usually over drugs, not social structure.
Nowadays, the socs were called 'hippies' and had a lot of fun disturbing the peace with their anti-war protests. Not that I disagreed with them about war, but the fact that they were trying to fight a war with a war just didn't make sense to me. And on top of it all, they were spending their minds on pot and ecstasy.
I had tried pot once and it was nothing to remark over. Then again, I wasn't into the 'expand your mind' movement much like they were.
I shook my head. I tried not to think about Dallas, but it was hard not to, considering I was in the city he'd grown up in. Of course, he had grown up in a rougher area, but New York is New York.
I walked up the front porch steps of my grandparents' home and knocked on the door. I clutched the envelope close to me and waited for someone to open the door.
Eventually, my grandfather, Eric, opened it. It was only going on a quarter to two now: Greg and Claire were still at school. That's how I had planned it. I wanted to talk with my grandparents first before getting the twins' hopes up, in case some unexpected wall came caving in.
"Oh, hi, Candice," Eric said, his voice low and sounding tired. He was a bit of a grumpy old man, but he wasn't all bad.
"Hi, Grandpa," I greeted.
"Come in, come in. Make yourself at home. The kiddos are at school," he said.
"Yeah, I figured," I said. "I actually wanted to talk to you and grandma first before they got home. I didn't tell them I was coming."
"Oh, they'll be surprised. Judith!" he hollered. There was a ruckus and some loud clanging before my grandmother walked into the room, seeming slightly dazed.
"Hi, Gran," I greeted.
Judith gave me a look like she had no idea who I was.
