A Girl in New York (Pre/Sequel to The Outsiders: A Girl in the Gang)

Chapter 4- Naive Stupid Child That I Was

        I don’t think I ever remember our parents not fighting, and by the time I was six I was so sick of it I was almost never at home.  New York may seem like a dangerous place for a six-year-old girl, and it was, at least until I learned how to defend myself.

        When I was five and had first started going to school, I asked Dally to teach me a lot of things.  At first I wanted him to teach me how to shoplift without getting caught, cause back then that was all I knew of his many illegal activities, even though he was only nine.

        I knew Dally had a gang that he belonged to too, but I didn’t know which one.  I didn’t really care either, because as far as I knew they hadn’t initiated a gang beating for him to join, like they would do that to a nine year old.  But at the time that was something I commonly saw on the streets, so of course my dumb five-year-old mind thought that.

        Anyways, Dally made up a bunch of excuses, like I was to young and a girl, so he wasn’t going to teach me that stuff.  I learned how to shoplift myself pretty quickly though after our mother got fired and we had no money.

        I learned how to fight myself to, but that was only after I got jumped a few too many times.

        It was late at night, and I had been doing whatever I did when I was five out on the streets.  I had been on my way home around ten at night, hoping that Dally or my most likely drunk parents wouldn’t yell at me when I got home.

        I remember walking past a dark alley a couple blocks away from my house when I heard some noise, and, naïve stupid child that I was, I decided to check it out.

        Garbage and broken glass crunched under my worn-out sneakers as I entered the alley, straining to see in the dim light coming from the flickering light on the side of the building above the overflowing, quite smelly, dumpsters.

        I saw something moving in the shadows and foolishly called out, “Hello?”

        There was more scuffling and I wondered if it was an animal of some kind, because occasionally raccoons or stray cats would be rooting around in the dumpsters and garbage in the back alleys.

        I jumped when three teenage boys, which are very scary when you’re in kindergarten, emerged from the shadows.  One of them was taking a drag on a cigarette, one of them held a bottle of beer, and the other just looked tough and mean as he reached for his back pocket.  Actually, they all looked tough and mean.

        I stood there staring at them thinking I should run when I saw one of them pull a blade out of his back pocket, but of course my brain didn’t communicate with my feet fast enough and they had me on the ground screaming at the top of my lungs within seconds.

        One of them stuck his hand over my mouth, the other two were yelling for me to shut up, and I promptly bit the fingers clasped over my mouth.

        He swore and jumped back, but then one of the other guys who reeked of cigarette smoke grabbed his blade and pinned me down again before I had a chance to scramble to my feet.

        I don’t remember much after that first punch, I’m pretty sure they knocked me out or something, but the next thing I know I woke up in excruciating pain, but the three teenage boys were gone.  I curled up in a little ball, laying there waiting for the pain to go away.

        When I finally stumbled home, I found our father passed out on the couch, snoring and clutching a bottle of alcohol, and our mother was dead asleep on the bed in their room, fully dressed and knocked out for a good twelve hours from her overdose on some type of pill or drug or another.

        They hadn’t even noticed I was gone, but Dally did and he was freaking out.  It scared me when he got that mad back when I was young.