Dallas Winston Has A Sister? (Outsiders Fanfic)

Nothing Gold Can Stay (Including the Girl You Have a Crush On)

Note to Readers: All the pictures mentioned in here I have actually drawn myself, except for the writing on the back of the poem one.  Wish I could show you, but I have no idea how to. 

        Pony picked up the sketchbook that was laying on the table.  There was no name on it, but it wasn't his, and none of the other guys drew anything, so what was it doing thrown on the coffee table?  He opened the tattered sketchbook, the pages dog-eared and ripped at the corners, with a ton of other drawings on random sheets folded in half and put between the pages.

        All the pictures were evil, mysterious, and occasionally almost scary.  There were sketches of bones, a flaming skull, and a butterfly that was made entirely out of bones from a body, like ribs and skull and femurs and finger and toe bones. 

        There were some mysterious ones too, part of a face in the corner of the page or the middle, but that's not what the creepy part was.  In a dilapidated room with cracked plaster or peeling wallpaper that could be seen behind her, there was always a shadowy figure.  Lurking in a doorway, a window, a trapdoor.  There was even one where you could see a hand holding a gun, and the whole picture was shattered by a bullet hole.  There was more than one mysterious picture like that, but it was always a girl in the picture, and the shadowy figure seemed to be a man in all of them.

        On folded sheets of notebook paper tucked between the pages was a cave, mostly dark that was so realistic it almost scared Ponyboy, and a silhouette of a vampire with blood-red eyes, behind him an eerily white moon in the gray sky.

        Pony turned the page again, a folded sheet of white paper lay on top.  He picked it up and unfolded it, and the picture nearly took his breath away.  It was a kind of strange picture, but it definitely wasn't evil.  The page was split in half horizontally by the horizon line, green grass below and a weird half a sun above.  The half-circle was yellow, but one side had a sunset blended in oranges, blues, and blacks, and the other side was a sunrise with yellows, pinks, and purples.  In the center of the picture was an open hand, and resting on the palm was a green leaf connected to a golden yellow flower, like one morphed into the other.  Behind the hand was the hands of a clock, the face being the half of sun peeking over the edge of the horizon, the hands set at two o'clock.  The picture reminded him of the exact poem that was written on the back.

        Nature's first green is gold

        Her hardest hue to hold        

        Her early leaf's a flower

        But only so an hour

        Then leaf subsides to leaf

        So Eden sank to grief

        So dawn goes down to day        

        Nothing gold can stay

        And below that it was signed,

        Poem by Robert Frost.  Picture by Tara Winston.

        Someone suddenly cleared their throat behind him, and Pony jumped, dropping the sketchbook that had been balanced in one hand and tightening his grip on the paper with the picture and the poem in the other.  He turned around to see Tara standing there, looking almost cute, he thought, even though she was clearly pissed off.  Red blossomed across his face, starting from his ears and spreading over his cheeks in embarrassment when he realized that it was Tara's sketchbook he had been looking at.

        "What do you think you were doing?" she asked, her voice cold and her eyes daggers of pale blue ice.

        Instead of apologizing, Pony blurted, "I didn't know you could draw," because he was shocked, especially at her picture of one of his favorite poems.

        "I didn't want you to know," she shot back, still mad as she marched over to where the sketchbook was laying spine up on the floor, papers scattered everywhere.

        "Why not?" Pony asked, curious.  "You're really good," he complimented her as she stood up, sketchbook picked up and clutched in her hand.  She just stared at him.  Since she didn't say anything, Pony asked, "Where did you get this poem?  It's one of my favorites."

        "Did you think that since I'm just like my brother I can't draw or read?  I only do it when I'm bored and he's drunk anyways," she retorted defensively, snatching the paper back that Pony was still holding.

        He let her have it, and she tucked it inside the sketchbook and headed for the door, though he didn't know where she was going.  She was staying with them cause Dally was in the slammer yet.

        "I'm sorry," he called after her, and she stopped with her hand on the doorknob.  She turned back to him, and Pony thought she might say something, but then Tara shook her head, dismissing the thought it seemed, and continued out the door.  It slammed, but Pony couldn't help but grin to himself.  Even though she was mad at him, he was more in love with Tara Winston than ever before.