The Outsiders: Before My Time Part III

Bottle Caps

Goldie's POV

I quickly came up with some excuse that I needed to pick up my siblings, which I guess was not made up. I could have stayed longer, but my mind was spinning and I needed to tell them what just happened. I offered to come again the next day at the same time to finish the assignment. Mom walked me out and said that she will keep trying to brainstorm ideas for the rest of our paper.

I drove as fast as I could to the park, where I saw Candy and Red playing on the jungle gym.

I leaned out the window and stuck my fingers between my lips to give them a loud whistle. Their heads snapped in my direction, and I waved them over. They climbed down swiftly and raced each other to the car. By the time they hopped inside, their breathing was hard and beads of sweat were forming around their hairlines. I kept the car on and cranked the window down for air but stayed parked. I told them about everything from the visit, including my introduction to the alien idea of Sandy.

"Who's Sandy?" Candy asked with a curious tilt of her head. I never really noticed it before, but she does look an awful lot like Mom.

"Dad's girlfriend," I revealed.

"Mom?" She questioned.

"No."

Her eyes widened and all of her playful energy drained out of her. "That doesn't make any sense. Mom and Dad already went on their first date."

"Did we do something to break them up?" Red asked, his voice quivered. At least I wasn't the only one who thought of the worst-case scenario.

"No, no, no," Candy tried to reassure him, even though her own confidence wavered. Then she thought about it for a second. "I hope not."

"We should have paid more attention to Mom's stories," I mumbled and put my head back against the headrest to close my eyes. So much was happening all at once. I just want to go home. Why is this so difficult?

"Why does Dad have a girlfriend?" Red asked.

"I don't know, little buddy," I sighed.

"Do we know when he met Sandy?" Candy asked.

"No idea," I answered.

"What should we do?" Candy asked.

"I don't think we should do anything," I said before Candy could get any ideas. I looked at her and said, "we probably caused enough trouble as it is."

"If we caused this, we have to fix it."

"I am not sure if we even did anything. We should just stay put and go about our business. Pay very close attention to everything and make sure we don't do anything else because literally any little thing we do could change the entire future. Our future."

As the days progressed, I did not hear much more about this mysterious Sandy character. She never came by the house, and Dad almost went out of his way to avoid talking about her. She almost seemed like his imaginary friend.

I had the chance to head over to the Curtis house a lot while Mom and I were finishing up our paper. These visits would be hours long, usually I was invited to grab a plate at dinner. I never passed it up. Even when the assignment was finished and turned in, I was still getting invited to eat dinner with Mom and her friends. It got to be so frequent, I asked if I could bring my siblings along. I even offered to help pay for our share for the dinner, but Darry always refused. He said we were welcome every night.