Heart Breaker

Chapter 21

(Ponyboy's POV)

Now there were four of us sitting in the waiting room waiting to hear how Dally and Johnny were. Then the reporters and the police came. They asked too many questions too fast, and got me mixed up. If you want to know the truth, I wasn't feeling real good in the first place. Kind of sick, really. And I'm really scared of policemen anyway. The reporters fired one question right after another at me and got me so confused I didn't know what was coming off. Darry told them I wasn't in any shape to be yelled at so much and they slowed down a little. Darry's kinda big.

Sodapop kept them in stitches. He'd grab one guy's press hat and another's camera and walk around interviewing the nurses and mimicking TV reporters. He tried to lift a policeman's gun and grinned so crazily when he was caught that the policeman had to grin too. Soda can make anyone grin.

y/n was surrounded by reporters also. She looked as if she could knock out one of the reporters at this point. She looked really annoyed so she just pushed them away.

I managed to get hold of some hair grease and comb my hair back so that it looked a little better before thay got any pictures. I'd die if I got my picture in the paper with my hair looking lousy. Darry, Sodapop and y/n were in the pctures too. Jerry Wood told me that if Sodapop and Darry hadn't been so good-looking, they wouldn't have taken so many. That was public appeal, he said.

Soda was really getting a kick out of all this. I guess he would have enjoyed it more if it hadn't been so serious, but he couldn't resist anything that caused that much excitement. I swear, sometimes he reminds me of a colt. A long-legged palomino colt that has to get nose into everything. The reporters stared at him admiringly; He looks like a movie star, and he kind of radiates.

Finally, even Sodapop got tired of the reporter--- he gets bored with the same old thing after a time--- and stretching out on the long bench, he put his head in Darry's lap and went to sleep. I guess both of them were tired--- it was late at night and I knew they hadn't had much sleep during the week. Even while I was answering questions I remembered that it had only been a few hours since I was sleeping off a smoke in the corner of the church. Already it was an unreal dream and yet, at the time I couldn't have imagined any other world. Finally, the reporters started to leave, along with the police.