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

Chapter 8- I Never Saw Him Again

        With a gasp and a yell, I sat up with a start on the musty-smelling couch, my heart pounding and my breathing ragged.  I looked around the dim interior of the room and nearly jumped out of my skin when I saw something moving in the shadows.

        As he stepped into the circle of light cast by the single bulb on the ceiling, I could see that it was the guy, the one from before.  He had taken off the fedora but was still wearing the trench coat over a T-shirt and black pants.  He had boots on.

        I scrambled backwards, pressing my back up against the couch.  Pain shot through me when I moved so quickly, and I let out a cry of alarm.

        “Hey, calm down kid.  I’m not going to hurt you.  How do you feel?” he asks me.

        “Who are you?  Where am I?” I asked in a high-pitched shaky voice. Because I was only six, I was scared out of my mind about waking up in a strange place like this all by myself, and I felt like I was about to break down in tears any second.

        “You’re at my house,” he told me in a calm voice.  “Are you okay?” he asks again.

        “I hurt all over,” I said quietly, still scared but in too much pain to make a break for the door, even though I didn’t know where the door was in the first place.

        “I want to go home,” I mumbled, forcing back the tears threatening to fall. 

        I knew my parents would kill me if they found out, and Dally would be really mad.  I had promised him last time that it wasn’t going to happen again.

        “I know.  But do you feel okay enough to leave?” he asks me gently. 

        He wasn’t as scary as I’d originally thought, and I was slowly starting to relax, realizing just how tired I was.  Now that he didn’t have the hat on, I could see that he was a teenager himself, one of the big guys that scared me so much then.  About nineteen, I would have guessed. 

        I gave a nod in answer to his question and painfully got to my feet, trying to hold back a groan of protest from moving my aching body.

        He looked at me warily but then handed me my jacket, and I set it next to me on the couch, instead opting to put my shoes on, but I couldn’t find them as I glanced around.  I don’t really remember anything of what the place looked like, except for the smell of the couch and the single light that illuminated the guy that saved my life.

        He handed me my shoes too, and I snatched them out of his hands, pulling them on and pretending to not be as weak and defenseless as I really was when I was young.  I jerked on my jacket, and he grabbed his hat and led me out the door.

        He went with me to our neighborhood, or at least he led me to the area of town where I usually hung out, mentioning something about how he saw me around there and knew about my brother.  No one knew Dally, but everyone had heard of him, even when he was just a kid and we were still living in New York.

        Figuring I would be in so much trouble I’d be locked in mine and Dally’s room for the rest of my life, I had snuck in the window of our house.  Or more so apartment, because we actually lived in a run-down apartment building.  The fire escape was many a delinquent teenager’s—and in my case naughty kid’s—escape from their parents without getting caught.  I climbed in the window, it was never locked because the lock was broken, and into mine and Dally’s room. 

        Much to my relief, he wasn’t there, and the door to our room was shut which meant both of our parents were unconscious from some form of drug or another.  They insisted we keep the door open, because that was as far as their parenting would go, but we shut it if we were sneaking out and wanted them to think that we were still home.  If they found it shut, they’d kick it open and rat us out for ten minutes, if we were there, but more often rat us out when we got back if they were still sober enough to remember to do it. But if they were drugged up, they never noticed.

        I lay awake in bed for a while, too sore to sleep and wondering about that guy.  I never saw him again after that, but I didn’t really want to be rescued by a stranger again anytime soon, so I was determined to learn how to fend for myself.