The Outsiders

by SE Hinton

  So Soda had to content himself with bouncing up and down on the bed and pounding on my shoulder.

  “Gosh, but you were sick. You feel okay now?”

  “I’m okay. Just a little hungry.”

  “I should think you would be,” Darry said. “You wouldn’t eat anything most of the time you were sick. How’d you like some mushroom soup?”

  I suddenly realized just how empty I was. “Man, I’d like that just fine.”

  “I’ll go make some. Sodapop, take it easy with him, okay?”

  Soda looked back at him indignantly. “You’d think I was going to challenge him to a track meet or something right off the bat.”

  “Oh, no,” I groaned. “Track meet. I guess this just about puts me out of every race. I won’t be back in condition for the meets. And the coach was counting on me.”

  “Golly, there’s always next year,” Soda said. Soda never has grasped the importance Darry and I put on athletics. Like he never has understood why we went all-out for studying. “Don’t sweat it about some track meet.”

  “Soda,” I said suddenly. “What all did I say while I was delirious?”

  “Oh, you thought you were in Windrixville most of the time. Then you kept saying that Johnny didn’t mean to kill that Soc. Hey, I didn’t know you didn’t like baloney.”

  I went cold. “I don’t like it. I never liked it.”

  Soda just looked at me. “You used to eat it. That’s why you wouldn’t eat anything while you were sick. You kept saying you didn’t like baloney, no matter what it was we were trying to get you to eat.”

  “I don’t like it,” I repeated. “Soda, did I ask for Darry while I was sick?”

  “Yeah, sure,” he said, looking at me strangely. “You asked for him and me both. Sometimes Mom and Dad. And for Johnny.”

  “Oh. I thought maybe I didn’t ask for Darry. It was bugging me.”

  Soda grinned. “Well, you did, so don’t worry. We stayed with you so much that the doctor told us we were going to end up in the hospital ourselves if we didn’t get some sleep. But we didn’t get any anyway.”

  I took a good look at him. He looked completely worn out; there were circles under his eyes and he had a tense, tired look to him. Yet his dark eyes were still laughing and carefree and reckless.

  “You look beat,” I said frankly. “I bet you ain’t had three hours sleep since Saturday night.”

  He grinned but didn’t deny it. “Scoot over.” He crawled over me and flopped down and before Darry came back in with the soup we were both asleep.

  Chapter 11

  I HAD TO STAY IN BED a whole week after that. That bugged me; I’m not the kind that can lie around looking at the ceiling all the time. I read most of the time, and drew pictures. One day I started flipping through one of Soda’s old yearbooks and came across a picture that seemed vaguely familiar. Not even when I read the name Robert Sheldon did it hit me who it was. And then I finally realized it was Bob. I took a real good long look at it.

  The picture didn’t look a whole lot like the Bob I remembered, but nobody ever looks a whole lot like his picture in a yearbook anyway. He had been a sophomore that year—that would make him about eighteen when he died. Yeah, he was good-looking even then, with a grin that reminded me of Soda’s, a kind of reckless grin. He had been a handsome black-haired boy with dark eyes—maybe brown, like Soda’s, maybe dark-blue, like the Shepard boys’. Maybe he’d had black eyes. Like Johnny. I had never given Bob much thought—I hadn’t had time to think. But that day I wondered about him. What was he like?

  I knew he liked to pick fights, had the usual Soc belief that living on the West Side made you Mr. Super-Tuff, looked good in dark wine-colored sweaters, and was proud of his rings. But what about the Bob Sheldon that Cherry Valance knew? She was a smart girl; she didn’t like him just because he was good-looking. Sweet and friendly, stands out from the crowd—that’s what she had said. A real person, the best buddy a guy ever had, kept trying to make somebody stop him—Randy had told me that. Did he have a kid brother who idolized him? Maybe a big brother who kept bugging him not to be so wild? His parents let him run wild—because they loved him too much or too little? Did they hate us now? I hoped they hated us, that they weren’t full of that pity-the-victims-of-environment junk the social workers kept handing Curly Shepard every time he got sent off to reform school. I’d rather have anybody’s hate than their pity. But, then, maybe they understood, like Cherry Valance. I looked at Bob’s picture and I could begin to see the person we had killed. A reckless, hot-tempered boy, cocky and scared stiff at the same time.

  “Ponyboy.”

  “Yeah?” I didn’t look up. I thought it was the doctor. He’d been coming over to see me almost every day, although he didn’t do much except talk to me.

  “There’s a guy here to see you. Says he knows you.” Something in Darry’s voice made me look up, and his eyes were hard. “His name’s Randy.”

  “Yeah, I know him,” I said.

  “You want to see him?”

  “Yeah.” I shrugged. “Sure, why not?”

  A few guys from school had dropped by to see me; I have quite a few friends at school even if I am younger than most of them and don’t talk much. But that’s what they are—school friends, not buddies. I had been glad to see them, but it bothered me because we live in kind of a lousy neighborhood and our house isn’t real great. It’s run-down looking and everything, and the inside’s kind of poor-looking, too, even though for a bunch of boys we do a pretty good job of house-cleaning. Most of my friends at school come from good homes, not filthy-rich like the Socs, but middle-class, anyway. It was a funny thing—it bugged me about my friends seeing our house. But I couldn’t have cared less about what Randy thought.

  “Hi, Ponyboy.” Randy looked uncomfortable standing in the doorway.

  “Hi, Randy,” I said. “Have a seat if you can find one.” Books were lying all over everything. He pushed a couple off a chair and sat down.

  “How you feeling? Cherry told me your name was on the school bulletin.”

  “I’m okay. You can’t really miss my name on any kind of bulletin.”

  He still looked uncomfortable, although he tried to grin.

  “Wanna smoke?” I offered him a weed, but he shook his head. “No, thanks. Uh, Ponyboy, one reason I came here was to see if you were okay, but you—we—got to go see the judge tomorrow.”

  “Yeah,” I said, lighting a cigarette. “I know. Hey, holler if you see one of my brothers coming. I’ll catch it for smoking in bed.”

  “My dad says for me to tell the truth and nobody can get hurt. He’s kind of upset about all this. I mean, my dad’s a good guy and everything, better than most, and I kind of let him down, being mixed up in all this.”

  I just looked at him. That was the dumbest remark I ever heard anyone make. He thought he was mixed up in this? He didn’t kill anyone, he didn’t get his head busted in a rumble, it wasn’t his buddy that was shot down under a street light. Besides, what did he have to lose? His old man was rich, he could pay whatever fine there was for being drunk and picking a fight.

  “I wouldn’t mind getting fined,” Randy said, “but I feel lousy about the old man. And it’s the first time I’ve felt anything in a long time.”

  The only thing I’d felt in a long time was being scared. Scared stiff. I’d put off thinking about the judge and the hearing for as long as I could. Soda and Darry didn’t like to talk about it either, so we were all silently counting off the days while I was sick, counting the days that we had left together. But with Randy sticking solidly to the subject it was impossible to think about anything else. My cigarette started trembling.

  “I guess your folks feel kind of awful about it, too.”

  “My parents are dead. I live here with just Darry and Soda, my brothers.” I took a long drag on my cigarette. “That’s what’s worrying me. If the judge decides Darry isn’t a good guardian or something, I’m liable to get stuck in a home
somewhere. That’s the rotten part of this deal. Darry is a good guardian; he makes me study and knows where I am and who I’m with all the time. I mean, we don’t get along so great sometimes, but he keeps me out of trouble, or did. My father didn’t yell at me as much as he does.”

  “I didn’t know that.” Randy looked worried, he really did. A Soc, even, worried because some kid greaser was on his way to a foster home or something. That was really funny. I don’t mean funny. You know what I mean.

  “Listen to me, Pony. You didn’t do anything. It was your friend Johnny that had the knife . . .”

  “I had it.” I stopped him. He was looking at me strangely. “I had the knife. I killed Bob.”

  Randy shook his head. “I saw it. You were almost drowned. It was the black-headed guy that had the switchblade. Bob scared him into doing it. I saw it.”

  I was bewildered. “I killed him. I had a switchblade and I was scared they were going to beat me up.”

  “No, kid, it was your friend, the one who died in the hospital . . .”

  “Johnny is not dead.” My voice was shaking. “Johnny is not dead.”

  “Hey, Randy.” Darry stuck his head in the door. “I think you’d better go now.”

  “Sure,” Randy said. He was still looking at me kind of funny. “See you around, Pony.”

  “Don’t ever say anything to him about Johnny,” I heard Darry say in a low voice as they went out. “He’s still pretty racked up mentally and emotionally. The doc said he’d get over it if we gave him time.”

  I swallowed hard and blinked. He was just like all the rest of the Socs. Cold-blooded mean. Johnny didn’t have anything to do with Bob’s getting killed.

  “Ponyboy Curtis, put out that cigarette!”

  “Okay, okay.” I put it out. “I ain’t going to go to sleep smoking, Darry. If you make me stay in bed there ain’t anywhere else I can smoke.”

  “You’re not going to die if you don’t get a smoke. But if that bed catches on fire you will. You couldn’t make it to the door through that mess.”

  “Well, golly, I can’t pick it up and Soda doesn’t, so I guess that leaves you.”

  He was giving me one of those looks. “All right, all right,” I said, “that don’t leave you. Maybe Soda’ll straighten it up a little.”

  “Maybe you can be a little neater, huh, little buddy?”

  He’d never called me that before. Soda was the only one he ever called “little buddy.”

  “Sure,” I said, “I’ll be more careful.”

  Chapter 12

  THE HEARING WASN’T anything like I thought it would be. Besides Darry and Soda and me, nobody was there except Randy and his parents and Cherry Valance and her parents and a couple of the other guys that had jumped Johnny and me that night. I don’t know what I expected the whole thing to be like—I guess I’ve been watching too many Perry Mason shows. Oh, yeah, the doctor was there and he had a long talk with the judge before the hearing. I didn’t know what he had to do with it then, but I do now.

  First Randy was questioned. He looked a little nervous, and I wished they’d let him have a cigarette. I wished they’d let me have a cigarette; I was more than a little shaky myself. Darry had told me to keep my mouth shut no matter what Randy and everybody said, that I’d get my turn. All the Socs told the same story and stuck mainly to the truth, except they said Johnny had killed Bob; but I figured I could straighten that point out when I got my turn. Cherry told them what had happened before and after Johnny and I had been jumped—I think I saw a couple of tears slide down her cheeks, but I’m not sure. Her voice was sure steady even if she was crying. The judge questioned everyone carefully, but nothing real emotional or exciting happened like it does on TV. He asked Darry and Soda a little bit about Dally, I think to check our background and find out what kind of guys we hung out with. Was he a real good buddy of ours? Darry said, “Yes, sir,” looking straight at the judge, not flinching; but Soda looked at me like he was sentencing me to the electric chair before he gave the same answer. I was real proud of both of them. Dally had been one of our gang and we wouldn’t desert him. I thought the judge would never get around to questioning me. Man, I was scared almost stiff by the time he did. And you know what? They didn’t ask me a thing about Bob’s getting killed. All the judge did was ask me if I liked living with Darry, if I liked school, what kind of grades I made, and stuff like that. I couldn’t figure it out then, but later I found out what the doctor had been talking to the judge about. I guess I looked as scared as I really was, because the judge grinned at me and told me to quit chewing my fingernails. That’s a habit I have. Then he said I was acquitted and the whole case was closed. Just like that. Didn’t even give me a chance to talk much. But that didn’t bother me a lot. I didn’t feel like talking anyway.

  I wish I could say that everything went back to normal, but it didn’t. Especially me. I started running into things, like the door, and kept tripping over the coffee table and losing things. I always have been kind of absent-minded, but man, then, I was lucky if I got home from school with the right notebook and with both shoes on. I walked all the way home once in my stocking feet and didn’t even notice it until Steve made some bright remark about it. I guess I’d left my shoes in the locker room at school, but I never did find them. And another thing, I quit eating. I used to eat like a horse, but all of a sudden I wasn’t hungry. Everything tasted like baloney. I was lousing up my schoolwork, too. I didn’t do too badly in math, because Darry checked over my homework in that and usually caught all my mistakes and made me do it again, but in English I really washed out. I used to make A’s in English, mostly because my teacher made us do compositions all the time. I mean, I know I don’t talk good English (have you ever seen a hood that did?), but I can write it good when I try. At least, I could before. Now I was lucky to get a D on a composition.

  It bothered my English teacher, the way I was goofing up, I mean. He’s a real good guy, who makes us think, and you can tell he’s interested in you as a person, too. One day he told me to stay in after the rest of the class left.

  “Ponyboy, I’d like to talk to you about your grades.”

  Man, I wished I could beat it out of there. I knew I was flunking out in that class, but golly, I couldn’t help it.

  “There’s not much to talk about, judging from your scores. Pony, I’ll give it to you straight. You’re failing this class right now, but taking into consideration the circumstances, if you come up with a good semester theme, I’ll pass you with a C grade.”

  “Taking into consideration the circumstances”—brother, was that ever a way to tell me he knew I was goofing up because I’d been in a lot of trouble. At least that was a roundabout way of putting it. The first week of school after the hearing had been awful. People I knew wouldn’t talk to me, and people I didn’t know would come right up and ask about the whole mess. Sometimes even teachers. And my history teacher—she acted as if she was scared of me, even though I’d never caused any trouble in her class. You can bet that made me feel real tuff.

  “Yessir,” I said, “I’ll try. What’s the theme supposed to be on?”

  “Anything you think is important enough to write about. And it isn’t a reference theme; I want your own ideas and your own experiences.”

  My first trip to the zoo. Oh, boy, oh, boy. “Yessir,” I said, and got out of there as fast as I could.

  At lunch hour I met Two-Bit and Steve out in the back parking lot and we drove over to a little neighborhood grocery store to buy cigarettes and Cokes and candy bars. The store was the grease hang-out and that was about all we ever had for lunch. The Socs were causing a lot of trouble in the school cafeteria—throwing silverware and stuff—and everybody tried to blame it on us greasers. We all got a big laugh out of that. Greasers rarely even eat in the cafeteria.

  I was sitting on the fender of Steve’s car, smoking and drinking a Pepsi while he and Two-Bit were inside talking to some girls, when a car drove up and three Socs got
out. I just sat there and looked at them and took another swallow of the Pepsi. I wasn’t scared. It was the oddest feeling in the world. I didn’t feel anything—scared, mad, or anything. Just zero.

  “You’re the guy that killed Bob Sheldon,” one of them said. “And he was a friend of ours. We don’t like nobody killing our friends, especially greasers.”

  Big deal. I busted the end off my bottle and held on to the neck and tossed away my cigarette. “You get back into your car or you’ll get split.”

  They looked kind of surprised, and one of them backed up.

  “I mean it.” I hopped off the car. “I’ve had about all I can take from you guys.” I started toward them, holding the bottle the way Tim Shepard holds a switch—out and away from myself, in a loose but firm hold. I guess they knew I meant business, because they got into their car and drove off.

  “You really would have used that bottle, wouldn’t you?” Two-Bit had been watching from the store doorway. “Steve and me were backing you, but I guess we didn’t need to. You’d have really cut them up, huh?”

  “I guess so,” I said with a sigh. I didn’t see what Two-Bit was sweating about—anyone else could have done the same thing and Two-Bit wouldn’t have thought about it twice.

  “Ponyboy, listen, don’t get tough. You’re not like the rest of us and don’t try to be . . .”

  What was the matter with Two-Bit? I knew as well as he did that if you got tough you didn’t get hurt. Get smart and nothing can touch you . . .

  “What in the world are you doing?” Two-Bit’s voice broke into my thoughts.

  I looked up at him. “Picking up the glass.”

  He stared at me for a second, then grinned. “You little sonofagun,” he said in a relieved voice. I didn’t know what he was talking about, so I just went on picking up the glass from the bottle end and put it in a trash can. I didn’t want anyone to get a flat tire.

  I tried to write that theme when I got home. I really did, mostly because Darry told me to or else. I thought about writing about Dad, but I couldn’t. It’s going to be a long time before I can even think about my parents. A long time. I tried writing about Soda’s horse, Mickey Mouse, but I couldn’t get it right; it always came out sounding corny. So I started writing names across the paper. Darrel Shaynne Curtis, Jr. Soda Patrick Curtis. Ponyboy Michael Curtis. Then I drew horses all over it. That was going to get a good grade like all git-out.