The Outsiders: Before My Time Part III

The DX

Bri's POV
2019

After announcing the arrival of our baby boy, the gang jumped into action. Apparently, most of them enjoy children. Who knew.

Soda and I knew that the gang was definitely going to be a big part of our lives, even with our children. We all came to the agreement that they can never know about our unique past. Darry and Pony were going to be our children's uncles, while Steve, Dally, Johnny were going to be their great great uncles, and Two was going to be their great grandfather. This system was going to work.

I still saw them as the teenagers I grew to know and love. I adored them all endlessly.

Soda invited all the old geezers to our apartment to show off the ultrasound pictures and to help pick out baby names.

"I remember when my grandson, Ryan, was born," Steve said, taking the ultrasound picture from Johnny's hands and pushing his glasses up the bridge of his big nose. "I think you should name him Steve."

"I was going to suggest the name Dallas," Dally snickered gravelly. Thickened by years of drinking and smoking. "The only logical name."

"Please, don't listen to them," Darry said, combing his fingers through his, finally, grease free hair. "Let's just spit out baby names."

"I like Clark," Pony said.

"If it's from one of your dumb books—" Steve began to threaten.

"Does it help that it's a movie too?" Pony interrupted.

Steve stopped for a second and said, "slightly."

"I've got an idea," Soda said and everyone dropped their conversations to listen. "What if it's a girl, and we name her Lizard but we call her Liz for short. So, whenever someone says, 'oh, is your name Elizabeth?', she'll have to say, 'no, my name's Lizard'."

Soda looked around the room, searching for any bit of approval from us. We mostly just blinked profusely, attempting to wrap our brains around his dumbly sincere name suggestion.

Steve broke the silence by saying, "you are officially never allowed to touch a birth certificate in your whole life. Ever."

"Name him something that you'd both love," Darry suggested, completely ignoring Soda's idea.

"This is a little out of the blue," Dally said with such a low and raspy voice. "Soda's got himself a gold tooth, you know that? It's in the back, hard to spot. And I know you, Bri, said that gold is your favorite color. Name the kid Gold or something."

"Gold?" I sneered at the thought of naming my baby boy after a color. But then it hit me: Goldie. "I like Goldie."

"Goldie Curtis." Soda nodded and smiled broadly. "It's got a nice ring to it."

"Yeah." I felt myself get excited. That was our baby boy's name. "I really like it."

"Way to go, Dally," Ponyboy complimented.

"I do have my moments," Dally said, popping the collar of his outdated leather jacket.

"But our first daughter, we are going to name Liz," Soda said.

"No, that is off the table," I laughed.

"We can cross that bridge when we get to it."

End Flashback

Goldie's POV
April 2, 1965

We had to sit on a park bench to collect ourselves. Not only because of our endless running around the entire city, but the mental exhaustion of trying to figure out how and why we just saw our mother.