Reading The Outsiders

Prologue

The rain was pouring outside as most of the gang was gathered in the living room. Outside, the rain poured down in buckets and occasionally, large bolts of lightning flashed with the echoeing sound of thunder following.

Two-bit was sitting on the floor watching Mickey, a plate of chocolate cake and a can of beer sitting beside him. Steve and Soda were playing Poker at the table towards the corner of the room, Soda attempting to cheat like always. Darry sat in his chair reading the newspaper, glancing up at the door occasionally, waiting for Ponyboy to walk through the door.

Darry, Steve, and Soda had all gotten off early that day because of the thunderstorm that had started around the late afternoon, and Two-bit well, being Two-bit, decided to skip school for the day.  The pouring rains still after at least 3 hours still showed no signs of giving up.

Lightning suddenly flashed outside and a large boom of thunder suddenly echoed through the house. The lights flickered repeatedly and finally went out, along with the TV. Soda and Steve both jumped, their cards dropping from their hands and scattering over the table. Darry whipped his head to the side and looked through the window, looking for something that would tell him what hairbrushappened. He couldn't see anything though through the buckets of rain falling outside. He assumed that lightning had struck their power source, causing the electricity to go out. Darry knew it would eventually be fixed di he decided not to worry about it.

"Well. I'm bored" Two-bit announced after finishing his can of beer. He threw the can onto his empty plate, where his cake had been before he had eaten it. He stood up and stretched, his muscles feeling stiff from sitting, not moving, for that amount of time.

"Why don't you read a book or somethin'" Soda replied, not looking up from his cards that he had gathered up just the moment before. An ace slipped out of his jacket sleeve, leading Steve to glare at his friend as he noticed. Soda just smiled like a little kid who just got busted for something that they had done.

Two-bit just shrugged and got to his feet to look around. Ponyboy always left books around the house, even though Darry had told him to clean then up,  so Two-bit was bound to find one. He searched the living room finding a few books in a few random places, but none of them seemed to interest him. They all just seemed boring to him. Two-bit didn't understand how Pony could read books like that. He was about to give up and just sit in front of the Television and wait for us electricity to turn back on, when a few pieces of notebook paper caught his eye. It was sitting on the windowsill, and Two-bit reached out to grab it.

His eyes scanned the first couple lines and a slight smirk grew across his face. He couldn't believe what he had found.

"Hey guys!" Two-bit called. "Look what I found." He waved the paper in front of himself, holding the front facing everyone else. Soda, Steve, and Darry all looked up as Two-bit spoke to them.

Soda was the first to go up to Two-bit and grab the paper from him. He also quickly looked over the first couple lines of paper, a smile growing on his face as he realized what this was.

"Nice find Two-bit." congratulated Soda.

The first line of the paper said, "The Outsiders by Ponyboy Curtis". The whole gang knew of Ponyboy's theme that he had written about a year ago for his Language Arts class. The theme had been about what had happened when Johnny Cade killed Bob, a Soc, and what that led too. None of the gang had been able to read his theme yet, actually it was more like Ponyboy wouldn't let any of them read it, not even Soda or Darry. It was kind of surprising that Ponyboy would leave it just laying out like that, knowing the gang was nearly always there.

Suddenly, another large bolt of lightning struck, almost as loud and bright as the one that knocked out their power. At the same time as the lightning strike, the front door swung open, causing everyone to jump slightly at the loud noise of the following thunder and whip their heads in the direction of the door.