East West Sunset - A Darry Curtis Fanfiction

Chapter One

"Honey, I just don't understand why you want to go there."

"Mom, I want to know the truth."

"What is there to know? It doesn't matter."

"Mom this is my FATHER we are talking about, and YOU.  I want to know where he is, what happened to him. I want to know what happened to YOU"

"Some things should be left in the past."

"Mom, I'm almost 18 now. I need to know. Please just let me go."

"Alright, Diana. Alright."

I stood in front of the bus station, my heart fluttering in my chest. It was a constant mantra of excitement: I'm finally going to find out everything about my mother's past. I'm going to find my dad! I felt my mouth curve up slightly in happy nervousness as I clenched the strap of my leather satchel in one of my clammy palms. The ticket grasped in my other read, "Tulsa, Oklahoma. 5:00 AM departure, 8:00 AM arrival."

It was too early for me to be up, that was for sure. On any other morning, my eyes would have drooped in tiredness, and I would be yawning uncontrollably. But this morning, I was simultaneously full of anticipation and fear as I prepared to board a bus to my mother's hometown of Tulsa, Oklahoma. For some reason, her parents had kicked her out of Tulsa eighteen years ago, and she hadn't been back since. I figured that if I wanted to know what had caused my grandparents to completely cut my mother out of their lives, I should visit the city where it had all gone down. 

Suddenly, a voice crackled over the bus station's staticky PA system. "Tulsa bus leaving from terminal B in 5 minutes," a calming, unseen woman said. "Please begin boarding."

I looked up at the sign at the terminal nervously, making sure I was in the right place, even though I was sure I had gotten it right. Sure enough, the sign above the terminal read Terminal B.

With an excited glance at the passengers boarding with me, I stepped up on the first step of the bus's stairs. It creaked a little as I heard more people get on behind me, so I hastened my pace to keep them from having to wait too long to get to their seats. For my own seat, I chose a mustard yellow-cushioned bench in the front that had more than a few suspicious looking stains ingrained in the fabric. I brushed it off thoroughly before sitting down, but nothing could dislodge what I supposed was a few decades of dirt and grime from the surface. I turned to the driver, who grumpily grabbed my ticket from me, and, a little disgruntled, plopped down onto the seat. It was not the most comfortable, to say the least.

As I was stowing my satchel under the seat in front of me, the bus lurched forward with a squealing jolt. I thankfully caught myself from crashing into the back of the seat ahead of me by placing my palms on it to steady myself; angrily, I brushed myself off and re-situated my bag, which had slid out from under where I had stowed it. I pulled my small flat pillow out from the bag, folded it, and placed it against the window. I leaned my head against it and tried to sleep, but that was impossible. My nerves were still thrumming with the excitement of finally being on my way and the constant bounces and rumbles of the bus made it extremely difficult to sleep. The condensation beaded on the window slowly soaked my pillow as we bounced along, causing it to slip down the chill glass, so soon my cheek was pressed up against the window. Slightly disgusted at the thought of all the germs sticking to the glass, I finally gave up trying to sleep and just stared out the window instead. 

The streets flashed by, the familiar places where I had grown up: there was the restaurant my mother always used to take me after the rare occasions we went to church, there was the cute coffee shop where a lot of the kids from my school worked, there was my elementary school, there was the playground I had played at as a child. This town was full of memories and good times, but I needed to see some new horizons. As the bus turned away from all the familiar sights, I silently thanked the town for all it had taught me over the years and looked excitedly towards my future.

The rest of the bus ride was unsurprisingly bouncy and extremely uneventful. I never did manage to fall asleep, but I did get to talk to the woman who sat next to me, and she gave me some helpful advice.

"Be careful of the gangs there," she told me wisely, nodding her head and opening her eyes wide. "They can get pretty violent."

"Gangs?" I said, my voice scaling up a few octaves. Tulsa was more dangerous than I had anticipated.

"Yes. The east side- that's the poor side- that's the Greasers' turf. Those boys are slick and dangerous." Her shoulders jumped up as she gave an exaggerated shiver.

"Ah," I said uncertainly.

"The other side is not quite as bad- the west side. That's where the more well-to-do people live, and their children can get in... fights with the Greasers at times," she explained.

I swallowed nervously. "How bad does it get? Would you say it's too dangerous to try to be there by myself?"

The woman nodded emphatically, which of course made my stomach feel queasy with nervousness. "A few years ago, one of them Greasers stabbed Bob Sheldon, the son of one of the big businessmen in Tulsa. They're violent and crazy, those Greasers are. I'd try to stay on the west side if I were you."

"Uh, thanks for the tip."

I was still very excited, of course, but this new information made me apprehensive. Still, I supposed, it was better to be on the alert about this gang than completely unprepared. I wondered what they would be like.

"Do you know, like, how large it is, or who's in this Greaser gang?" I asked the woman.

"It's pretty large. Split up in factions. It's hard to say who's in it and who's not because the turnover rate is incredible. Most boys leave after a few years. I'd say the most steady faction is the Curtis gang, over by the train tracks. They're the most dangerous but by far the most reliable. There's about six or seven of them, I'd say. They've had the same fellas in that gang for going on four years now, and they're extremely close-knit," the woman told me importantly.

This Curtis gang piqued my interest but also made me wary. "So I should stay away from them."

"They'd probably not hurt you. But you never know," advised the woman.

I nodded and turned away from her, halting the flow of the conversation in order to mull over what I had just heard. I was curious about the Curtis gang; imagine how nice it would be to have close friends that treated you like family! I was sure they were dangerous and frightening, but I let myself imagine for a moment that there was a chance I could find a family like that one day.