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

Chapter 6- Once Again

        “Where in the world were you?” Dally whisper yelled at me the minute I came in the house.  His face was red, it always turned red when he got really mad when he was younger.

        He probably would have continued whisper yelling at me, so as not to wake our passed out parents, but then he noticed the bruises and blood all over me and the tears running down my dirty face.

        Dally let out an exasperated sigh and asked, “What happened?” as he led me into the bathroom.

        “I don’t know.  A bunch of big guys attacked me,” I whimpered in a tear-choked voice.

        “Big guys?” Dally asked.  When we were that young, anyone older than ten was considered ‘big’.

        I nodded and then screamed in pain.

        Dally was only eight and I was a squirmy whiny five-year-old, so obviously his attempt at trying to clean my wounds didn’t work so well.

        “Shh,” he hissed, wiping at the cuts on my face again. I didn’t listen, and after telling me a million times to hold still and quit complaining, Dally gave up trying to clean me up and told me to do it myself.

        It was weird, but I can always tolerate more pain if I was doing it myself rather than if someone else was cleaning up my injuries.  I was a bit of a klutz when I was younger, and it was arguable if I was any less klutzy now, so I got hurt a lot even without the possibility of being jumped every time I went outside when I lived in New York.

        I had a fever for two days after that, but Dally made me go to school because he didn’t want me home alone with our parents, who would most likely be fighting, all day long.  I just slept in class, and the teacher didn’t say anything after he saw my beat up face, either.  It was amazing how adults become all sympathetic if you have a couple of noticeable bruises.

        I learned to be more careful after that, and I quit staying out so late at night by myself.  But apparently not careful enough, because a few months after my sixth birthday, which I got nothing for and nearly forgot about myself, I got jumped again.

        This time it was two guys in their mid-twenties, who were drunk after one of them had tried to help the other through a break-up or something, if I remember correctly.  Considering the circumstances, I’m not sure how I remembered that after everything else that happened that night.

        It was only about nine o’clock, so I figured I wasn’t out late enough at night to have to worry about getting attacked by the scary alcoholics that occupied the alleys and roamed the streets of New York.  Once again, as it happened so often when I was young, I was wrong.

        A stray cat had jumped out of an alley and scared the crap out of me, and I jumped nearly three feet in the air.   After getting beat-up by that first time, everything scared me.

        I tripped over some trash on the sidewalk when I stumbled backwards after returning from being three feet airborne, and before I could even scramble to my feet those two guys, the mid-twenty-year-old's, had me pinned.

        They were worse than the three teenagers, I blacked out almost immediately, and I probably would have been beaten to death if it weren’t for a mysterious guy that saved my life.  I know, I was a pathetic little kid to have a random stranger save my life, but I was six.

        I woke up to a guy leaning over me, shaking me awake.   Pain was blossoming from every nerve in my body, and I groaned and closed my eyes again, not wanting to wake up and feel it.

        “Come on kid, wake up,” he said softly.

        I cracked my eyes open again, but I couldn’t see his face in the dark, it was hidden by the shadow cast across it from the brim of his fedora.  He seemed pretty young though, despite the trench coat and fedora that he had on that were usually worn by lawyers, not—well, not guys that were however old he was.

        “Poor kid,” he muttered and picked me up, despite my groans of pain.

        At the time I thought it was a dream, cause I blacked out or fell asleep soon after that.  When I woke up not knowing where I was a few hours later though, I knew that wasn’t the case.