The Outsiders: Before My Time Part III

Who Is Sandy?

Goldie's POV
April 5, 1965

I came up with some excuse that I needed to get my siblings, which I guess was not made up. 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 come up with 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 a jungle gym.

I leaned out the window and shouted their names and waved them over. They climbed down swiftly and raced each other to my car. By the time they hopped inside, their breathing was hard and sweat was forming at their hairlines. I kept the car on and unrolled the windows for air but stayed parked. I told them about everything from the visit, including Sandy.

"Who's Sandy?" Candy asked with a curious tilt of her head. She looks more and more like Mom every day.

"Dad's girlfriend," I revealed.

Her eyes went wide. "That can't be. Mom and Dad already went on their first date."

"Did we do something to break them up?" Red asked while his voice quivered. At least I wasn't the only one who thought that.

"No, no, no," Candy tried to reassure. 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.

"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 have probably caused enough trouble as it is."

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

"I am sure if we did even anything," I said. "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."

"We also should have paid attention to Mom when she played us that old movie of hers that she likes... Blast to the Past or something," Candy mentioned.

"Oh, Back to the Future," I said, vaguely remembering the plot. "That might have been a little bit helpful."

I got to be at the Curtis house a lot while trying to write that paper. Even when the assignment was due 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 the dinner, but Darry always refused.

One day when everyone was sitting at the table, which included all my uncles, parents, siblings, family friends, and great-grandfather, Darry made everyone a dinner of cooked vegetables and grilled chicken. Darry rotates between the same four meals to make for dinner, but I don't think anyone minds. Steve went around passing out drinks, everyone got bottles of beer except he got Mom a bottle of Coke and he grabbed Ponyboy and Dad bottles of Pepsi.

"What do y'all want?" Steve asked us from the kitchen.

"I'll just take a Coke," I said.

"Can I have a Pepsi, please?" Candy asked.

"Me too," Red added.