The Outsiders: A Girl in the Gang

Chapter 8

        I was on the ground and closest to the door, so I sprinted inside to see if Two-Bit was all right.  The minute I got in the house I started coughing, the air was thick with dust, and I made my way to the kitchen where most of it was coming from.  I waved the moldy sawdust smelling dust away from my face and recovered from a sneezing fit before I could see Two-Bit, on his back atop a pile of splintered wood and parts of shingles.

        "Two-Bit!" Darry screamed in rage, and I was reminded momentarily of Dally's screaming fit at me last Saturday and yesterday evening.  "What did I tell you?!" he shouted, and Two-Bit, coughing and groaning, slowly got up, one hand on his back.

        With a cheery grimace, Two-Bit said, "I saved you the work of taking it out," and Darry angrily smacked him on the back of the head.

        "Get this cleaned up, and then you and Tara can go buy us all some lunch," Darry demanded, slapping a twenty into my hand.

        "Why me?" I objected.

        "Cause you're the only one who won't let him spend it on beer!" Soda shouted joyfully from above.  I looked up to see his head peeking over the edge of a Two-Bit sized hole, blue sky framing his hair, shiny from sweat more than grease.  He quickly drew back when Darry glared up at him, but I could see my brother still leaning over the edge to look into the kitchen that now looked more like a wood shop than a kitchen.  He had a smirk on his face and was slowly shaking his head, disapprovingly.

        Darry shoved past me and then Steve, Pony, and Johnny, who had come to see if everyone was all right, before going outside.

        "So what just happened?" Ponyboy asked, confused.

        "Two-Bit just gave you guys air conditioning and Tara's his new babysitter," Steve smarted off.  I gave Steve a laser-death glare, and he just stuck his tongue out before going back outside.

        "Are you all right?" Pony asked me.

        "Just fine as long as I don't have to change any diapers," I said, playing off of Steve's babysitting joke.

        Two-Bit came in complaining how much his back hurt, and I spent the next fifteen minutes bossing him around, and then it took another half-hour before the mess in the kitchen was cleaned up.  We got pizza, I went with Two-Bit to pick it up, and I got a severe warning that I was still grounded from Dally before we left.

        Soda made some weird vegetable-potato-meat thing for supper, I have no idea what it was though it did taste pretty good, and by eleven that night, they had finished fixing the roof.  It would've taken them until about seven, but it took way longer since Two-Bit had busted through the roof, a point Darry pointed out all too frequently while they were working.  Needless to say, Two-Bit was not allowed on the roof, or even the ladder, he took over my job.  By the end of the day, we were all exhausted, sore, and sunburned.