bexley curtis ✰ || the outsiders

Twenty

Twenty

"What the hell do you mean by, 'I don't need to know'?" I raised my voice a little louder than normal as I mocked exactly what Darry said. He lifts his head up from his plate, wiping off the food grease in the corner of his lips with a crumpled up napkin. I fixed my eyes to Pony and Soda hoping they would at least explain to me what's going on, but they were both silent. They were looking at everything around them with their heads down besides at me and Darry.

"Listen, we have enough problems on our backs, even from tonight because of you. Now either you dig in and have a civilized conversation with one another, or you can go back to your room and stay there." Darry was becoming more tensed up at this point. He straightened his shoulders and started to look at me like he's waiting for me to say, 'I understand.' The way he looked at me with that cold, dead stare of his made me start to feel chills throughout my body.

I shot up from my chair making both Soda and Pony jump from their skins; Darry didn't even flinch a bit. I was angry at this point, my hands were balled into a fist to where my nails were digging hard into the palm of my hands.

"If it's something that includes me, I damn right deserve to know whatever on god's name you're hiding from me." I growled through my clenched teeth. Darry clenched his teeth and roughly ran his hands through his hair in frustration before he even shot up from his chair the same way I did. His chair backed up hitting against the cabinets making a loud noise that filled the whole house.

"If you want to know so badly," Darry started shouting throughout the kitchen as he was rummaging through his file drawer with his bills and other envelopes, "Then here, take a look at it, why dontcha'." He slammed a dirty, crumpled looking envelope onto the table as the silverware was clanging. The envelope was filled with random, folded papers.

"Darry-" Soda chimed in, his voice pleading him that fighting wasn't the best thing right now. But Darry cut him off.

"Shut it, Sodapop. If she wants to know, then she can have at it, I'm not in the mood to be bombarded with these situations - I just can't."

Just by hearing the apoplectic emotion shooting out of Darry's mouth, Soda's worried expression about me knowing about whatever is going on inside this envelope, and Pony's awkward silence is making me regret saying anything about how I earned my name. There was definitely a story behind it, maybe a bad story.

I couldn't even bring myself to pick up that envelope that was staring right at me, the envelope that had all the answers to my question that my brothers didn't want me to even know about. I brought the courage to pick it up, and once I did, that's when Ponyboy lifted his head and looked straight at me, picking his thumb. That was his nervous habit. I could feel Soda and Pony exchanging glances as I grabbed the pieces of paper that were folded in half. I opened one up, and there it was... my answer was written in bold lettering on the middle sheet of this paper. I glared at it, it felt like I wasn't even standing on my own two feet. My heart was pounding, and all I could feel was my blood boiling in a rage.

—

"Where the hell do you think you're going?" Darry yelled loud enough behind me. I wasn't turning back, my whole life was a lie. I stomped my feet against the ground as I had no idea where I was headed.

"Bexley Marilyn Curtis!" Darry yelled again, trying to get my attention as I hear him following right behind me. I stopped dead in my tracks, turning around. I couldn't even look at him in the eyes. Once I stopped, he stopped a few steps away from me which lead to a huge space between us.

"Why don't you call me, Haileigh, since that's what it says printed on that adoption certificate paper, Darell." I was on the urge of tears as I found out that I wasn't an actual biological sister to these three, but I was adopted.