The Outsiders: A Girl in the Gang

Chapter 17

        I wasn't even planning on going home that night, I didn't want to have to deal with Dally being even madder at me on top of Pony's heartfelt confession and my rejection.  I felt horrible about it, but I just didn't know what to do.  No guy had ever confessed to liking me before, in fact I don't think any guy had  ever liked me before.  And Dally would never let me date Ponyboy, that night we went to the movies Dally had banned me from ever talking to him again because he thought Pony would be trouble. 'Worse than Soda with girls' is what Dally had said, even though anyone with a brain could see that Ponyboy Curtis had no experience with girls.

        This was all just too confusing, what I had told Pony earlier about feelings being too complicated was definitely proving true now, and as always I just wanted to not think about it.  I wandered around town for maybe an hour trying to keep my mind off of all the thoughts swirling around in my brain,  but it didn't work, and eventually I gave up and headed home.

        It was 7:35 when I walked in the door, and Dally was home.

        He didn't get up from the couch where he was watching T.V. when I came in, just kept his gaze fixed on the screen and asked coldly, "Where were you?"

        I wanted to ignore him, but then he'd just yell more, so I stuck to simple answers.  "Out," I answered, because it's not like I was gonna say 'The kid you slapped and banned me from talking to just told me he had a crush on me and then he kissed me and I hugged him and ended up walking away after rejecting his plea to go out with him.  Oh, and then I wandered aimlessly around town for an hour like a crazy drunk bum,' or something along those lines.

        "Out where?" Dally asked.

        "Around town.  For once I'm not late, so can you leave me alone?" I asked boredly.

        "Who were you with?" Dal asked yet another question.

        "No one.  I'm not allowed to have friends, remember?" I lied, not being able to resist adding a sarcastic jab at my brother.

        "I didn't say that," he pointed out, but he still hadn't turned around to look at me.

        "I don't care what you say anymore, Dal," I said, not wanting to have another screaming match, or maybe wrestling match, with my brother right now.

        I headed up the stairs to my room, locking the door behind me and flopping onto my bed.  I wanted to scream and cry into my pillow, but I didn't cry cause I didn't have feelings.  Except for anger.  I grabbed the pillow and chucked it across the room, knocking a bunch of stuff off my desk.

        For the second time that day I wanted to kill someone.  Dally would be nice, or Pony, but the only thing that would solve all of my problems would be if I killed myself.  But that wasn't going to happen, so I resolved to slamming my fist into the wall or kicking something every time a thought about Ponyboy or Dally popped into my head.  It hurt, but eventually I was too tired to care and I fell asleep.

        Only to wake up the next morning with bruised knuckles and the guilt of having to face Ponyboy at school.  I was debating about whether to skip or not as I made my way down the stairs when I noticed the bruise on Dally's cheekbone, about the size of my fist. 

        So I had hit him once, and for a brief second I was proud of myself for finally leaving a mark on the invincible Dallas Winston.  That's why he wouldn't look at me yesterday.

        I ended up going to school, everyone would know something was up if I didn't.  If I avoided Pony that would mean avoiding the rest of the guys, and that would definitely not fly.  Two-Bit would track me down with bloodhounds and interrogate me if I didn't show up at school today.

        When I walked into English that morning, I had to force myself to not look at Ponyboy, but I knew he was there and he knew I was there, we were the only two people in the room.  We pretty much ignored each other the rest of the week, I made up an excuse every day after school to not go to the DX with them, most of the excuses involving Dally, and luckily Dally had to work at the mill early every day the rest of the week, so we didn't go to the Curtis's house in the morning like we sometimes did. 

        The only time I ended up not ignoring Pony was when we went to the DX for lunch every day, but then I hardly said more than a few words to him, and all about basic topics like assignments and teachers.  I wasn't sure if Johnny and Two-Bit could tell that something had gone wrong between us, or if Soda and Steve noticed when I didn't show up at the DX after school after Monday.

        On Friday after school, Two-Bit asked, "Hey Tara, are you gonna come with us to the DX today or not?  I promise you, Soda and Steve don't have the plague."

        I smiled at his half-joke, I was pretending to like his jokes more just to avoid talking to Pony and I guess they weren't as bad as I'd originally thought.

        "Sorry, I've got other stuff to do besides hand out with plague infested DX workers," I said, not going into detail with my excuse this time before turning and walking in the other direction.

        "I'll come with you," Johnny said quietly, catching up with me.

        That was odd, Johnny and I hardly ever talked to each other, and he wasn't at all buddy-buddy with me, only him and Pony were best friends.  Johnny probably hadn't said more than two words to me that weren't 'hi' or 'bye'.

        We walked in silence for a while and then Johnny asked, in his quiet voice that made you listen to whatever he had to say, "What happened between you and Pony?"

        So he had noticed.  And I didn't want to have another awkward conversation about feelings or whatever it was he was going to say, so I snapped, "I don't want to talk about it."

        Johnny flinched, and for a millisecond I thought about feeling guilty, but I didn't even bother. I could have lied and said 'nothing', but it was obvious that it wasn't nothing so it didn't pay.  We continued walking in silence, me a few feet ahead of Johnny so I wouldn't have to talk to him, but I think I had scared him enough that he wouldn't say anything in the first place.

        I was wrong.