Dallas Winston Has A Sister? (Outsiders Fanfic)

Being Human

Note to Readers: Sorry I haven't updated in a while, but I'm trying to make the ending of my other one really good.  I figured I could give you something while you're waiting for the end of the other one, so I  hope you like this one.  Please comment and tell me what you think about Tara actually crying.

        I walked in the Curtis's house, covered in blood and dirt and trying to make myself stop crying.  I know, Tara Winston, crying!  As shocking to me as it is to you, but I hurt like hell.  I was having a hard time breathing and I couldn't see straight, if at all.  My vision was all blurry from the blood running into my left eye, and maybe I was only crying because my right eye was so puffed up, not to mention plum colored, that tears were squeezing out.  My head hurt enough that I was thinking crazy thoughts like that too.

        Everyone looked up when I came in the door, tears streaming down my face.  I would have laughed at the look of shock on their faces except for it hurt too much and I was not in a very good mood after having gotten jumped by five Socs.  It would have been no big deal except for I didn't have my blade.

        "Are you okay?" Ponyboy asked me, and however cute he may be, that was the stupidest question that he could have asked at the moment.

        I didn't answer him and instead flopped down on the couch, which is the stupidest thing I could have done, and I did it.  I groaned and winced in pain, that hurt.  And I still had tears running down my face.  Today was not going well.

        Everyone was still staring at me and I just groaned, "It was the Socs, five of them.  I didn't have my blade," I explained.

        Ponyboy put his arm around my shoulders in an attempt to comfort me, I assumed, but even that hurt.  I winced and shrugged his arm off, a new round of tears starting, and this time I was sobbing.

        "Sorry," Pony apologized quickly, and it was silent for a while except for the sound of me trying to force back my tears.  

        Obviously, none of the gang had experience with crying teenage girls, and I hated that I was the first, and one at all.  Pony offered to get me some medicine, and that would help my headache but not my tears, so I shook my head no because I couldn't answer otherwise due to the big hiccupy gasps that were the results of me stanching my tears.

        "I'm being a wimpy baby," I said bitterly with a sniffle after I had caught my breath.

        "No you're not, you're being human," Pony told me, trying to make me feel better.

        I gave him a watery smile and then replied,"I'll be right back," before quickly getting up and heading to the bathroom before I broke down and started bawling again or something like that. I needed to clean myself up and pull myself together before Dally showed up.

        I grabbed a clean washcloth and drenched it in cold water, warm water would work better but cold water would make my face feel better, I think I was coming down with a fever or something.  I pulled my short hair back in an inch long ponytail at the nape of my neck with one of three rubber bands around my wrist. Don't ask why I had those and not my blade, and don't ask why the minute I let myself cry like a damsel in distress I suddenly turn girly and put my hair up.  I'm pretty sure that beating from the Socs had messed with my brain severely. 

        After a bit of painful scrubbing I got all the dirt and blood and trails from my tears off my face, and then I washed my hands  and arms in the sink and, after checking to make sure that the bathroom door that doesn't lock was closed tightly, I pulled my dirty torn shirt off and cleaned up the cut that ran from right below my rib cage to my hip.  It stung so bad I had to bite my lip, so hard it bled, to keep from screaming or crying again.

        I found a section of gaze and taped it up, it hurt bad enough that I didn't even want to put my shirt back on, but no way was I going back out there for all the guys to see me in just my bra.  Out of the four of them, Steve, Soda, Johnny, and Pony, I didn't want any of them, especially my boyfriend, to see me without a shirt on.  I pulled the blood-stained and dirt-smeared T-shirt back over my head, wincing at the pain coursing through my basically my entire body at the slightest movement, and tied up the right side with another rubber band, leaving most of the gauze and a large section of pale skin mottled with bruises showing.

        One thing I have to say, the Socs sure were thorough when the delivered a beating.  I had a bruise or a cut covering nearly every inch of exposed skin, and I began covering the all the cuts in band-aids if they were small enough.  The bigger ones I just left to scab over, I couldn't find any more gauze.

        Then I rolled up my jeans, which had huge holes in the knees from when one of them had tackled me from behind and I had skinned them on the pavement.  I set to work, tediously and painfully, picking bits of gravel out of my bloody, torn-up knees.  It looked like they had been put through a meat grinder and I was swearing up a storm as I doused all the open, bloody cuts in hydrogen peroxide the foamed and bubbled white before dissipating.

        Once again I washed my hands, cleaning up the blood and water and hydrogen peroxide that dripped in the sink and on the floor from running down my leg before downing four aspirin and heading back out into the living room.

        The first thing out of Steve's mouth was, "How can you look so sexy when you just got jumped?" and I shot him a glare, slowly and carefully sinking onto the couch next to Ponyboy, who was also glaring at Steve.

        I was Pony's girlfriend, not Steve's, and I just replied grumpily, "Shut up."  I was too tired to come up with a good insult.

        I leaned against the back of the couch, and I vaguely noticed that I didn't have my shoes or socks on anymore, and I don't think I had showed up at the Curtis's with my jacket.  Before I could worry about it though, I drifted off, using Pony's shoulder as a pillow.