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Darry needed the screwdriver if he was ever going to fix the stupid squeaky hinges on the door. the trouble was, all of the screwdrivers were in a spot where he wasn’t supposed to be: his father’s toolbox.
Darry could remember countless times in his youth when his father had asked him to bring him his toolbox or put a tool back beside the box, but he’d known better than to open it. it belonged to his father, and he wasn’t to get involved.
But the door had driven him crazy for too long and he couldn’t take it anymore. The constant slamming whenever anyone came into the house. The squeak when Pony slipped back in during the middle of the night after having a smoke on the porch. The way the wind snatched it in an instant, rattling and exacerbating the problem. Today was the day. He was finally going to fix it.
“Ponyboy,” he called into the house, “Can you find dad’s toolbox in the shed?”
Pony’s head peeked around the corner. “What do you need it—“ he caught a glimpse of the project. “Oh. Yeah, on it.”
He returned a moment later with the toolbox in hand and Soda in tow. The three gathered around the box, as though the contents was long lost treasure they’d finally tracked with a message in a bottle.
Darry did the honors. He slowly undid the clasp on the front, tipping the lid back cautiously like the tools might get scared if he opened it too fast.
The tools did not move. But they had remained in pristine condition over the years. Not an inch of rust or anything to suggest they’d had less than a perfect life.
Yet what really surprised Darry wasn’t the tools at all. It was a small book tucked in the corner of the box.
Soda grabbed it before he could, brushing dust off the cover and flipping to the first page: a photo of the five of them on the front steps.
Ponyboy smiled. “That’s when dad made the neighbor take our family picture so we didn’t have to go anywhere,” he ran a hand over the image, taking it in.
Soda turned the page to reveal a photo of Darry in a letterman’s jacket standing next to Ponyboy with a very questionable bowl cut.
“The end of junior season,” Darry said, a smile spreading across his face. he tried to do his best impression of his father, “it’s a big game. Last one of junior year, Junior.”
They all laughed.
“Your hair is worse than when you butchered it in Windrixville,” Soda said as he gave Pony a gentle nudge.
Pony snorted. “Yeah? And where were you?”
“Beats me,” Soda shrugged. “Probably under the bleachers.”
Darry couldn’t help but roll his eyes.
There were at least a dozen more photos—Soda’s first rodeo, Pony sitting beside their mother while she tended to the garden, Darry giving Pony a piggyback ride.
The last photo was one Darry didn’t recognize. A moment he hardly remembered and didn’t think had been memorialized.
It was a dim, blurry photo. Darry and Soda curled up on the living room floor, both of them asleep and tangled up in the same blanket, clearly miserable.
“You guys look like death,” Pony said lightheartedly as he stared at the image.
Soda squinted at the picture. “I don’t remember this being taken.”
Darry frowned. “Me either. I didn’t think this was the kind of thing we’d want to capture forever.”
Pony smirked. “That’s last December when you both had the flu at the same time, right?”
“Yeah it is,” Soda confirmed.
“If I remember right, Pony,” Darry ruffled his brother’s hair. “You got us sick in the first place.”
Ponyboy blushed and a sheepish smiled crept onto his face. “Yeah, something like that.”
____________________________
Ponyboy had missed almost the whole week of school, laid up on the couch with all the orange juice, tea, and soup he could have wanted. But after a restful few days off, he was almost ready to go back to class.
All he had to do was make it through the chaos of the morning and get out the door on time. His left shoe seemed to have wandered away from the door, the shower was fresh out of hot water, and he still didn’t know what he was going to have for breakfast. He was excited for real food though. He’d been waiting days for real food again.
He arrived in the dining room first. The house smelled of coffee—so his mother was already up and about—and a fresh stack of pancakes sat on the table.
He took a seat and waited for his family to arrive.
His father was first, pulling up a chair and opening up the paper. “How are you feeling, Pony?” He asked, glancing at his youngest son.
“A lot better,” Pony replied, pouring a glass of water.
“That’s great news,” he began, “you look a lot better too.”
His mother arrivied the room next, resting her hand against his forehead and humming happily when she realized he wasn’t running a fever anymore. “You going back to school today?” She asked as she placed plates down on the table.
“I want to,” he replied.
He watched both his parent nod in approval.
Their attention quickly shifted to the sound of coughing down the hall. Pony couldn’t tell which of his brothers it was, and it didn’t help that they arrived in the room at almost the exact same time.
He couldn’t help but notice that they both looked a mess. Darry’s shirt was only half buttoned and the look in his eyes suggested he’d hardly slept the night before; Soda’s hair stuck up a million different directions, still wet from the shower and uncombed, and his usual sun kissed glow had been replaced by an uncharacteristic paleness.
“Morning,” Darry mumbled as he made his way over to the coffee pot.
“You okay?” Pony asked.
“Fine,” Darry replied bluntly. “Just didn’t sleep well last night.”
His parents exchanged a look, but they couldn’t say anything before their attention was pulled away by a stifled cough from the other side of the table.
“I don’t like the sound of that,” Mr. Curtis said, glancing at his middle son. “You feel okay, Pepsi-Cola?”
Soda cleared his throat. “I’m fine, Didn’t swallow right.” He tried his best to dismiss their concern.
Darry stood up from the table before any more questions could be asked. “Well, I’m out of here. Gotta get to work.”
Their mother stared at him for a moment longer, something between worry and disappointment on her face, but she didn’t say anything.
Soda and Pony followed suit, grabbing their backpacks and heading out the door.
As the trio left, Ponyboy heard his mom call from behind him. “Call if you need anything.” And he couldn’t help but think she wasn’t talking to him.
___________
Pony was pretty tired after his first day back at school, but he had too much to do to get caught up. He settled at the dining room table, and cracked open his history textbook, hoping to at least put a dent in the work he’d missed before dinner.
His mom came home first, which wasn’t out of the ordinary. Typically, his dad and Darry were out much later, and Soda had gone out with Steve as soon as school ended. She gave him a quick pat on the shoulder before walking to the kitchen and putting on a pot of tea.
“How was school?” She asked him from the kitchen.
“Good,” he replied, hardly looking up from his homework.
For a moment, she looked as though she was going to ask him another question, but she stopped when she heard a car in the driveway.
Pony could recognize the sound of that car anywhere: Steve. He watched his mother pull back curtains in the living room, and he could have sworn he could see Soda stumbling to the door through the glass.
The door opened to reveal his middle brother looking worse for the wear—face paler than before, except for the red flush that bloomed across his cheeks and nose, jacket buttons undone, being held on only by his arms crossed tightly across his chest.
Soda tried his best to smile. “Hey, Ma,” he said through chattering teeth.
“You look awful, honey,” she said as she guided him into the warmth of the living room. “Why didn’t you call?”
Soda’s demeanor shifted instantly. His shoulders slumped as a series of coughs racked his frame. “Didn’t want to be a bother,” he began once he caught his breath. He practically fell onto the couch.
“You never are,” she said as she draped a quilt over him and brushed his hair back.
Darry arrived home shortly after. She didn’t even give him a chance to mutter “I’m fine” before her hand was resting on his forehead and she was all but dragging him to the couch.
“I can still help with dinner,” he tried to reason.
“No you can’t, baby. You’re burning up. Just rest.”
Darry settled deeper into the couch, finally letting himself relax. He felt Soda throw half a blanket over his legs and wriggle a little closer.
“You’re crushing me,” Darry groaned.
“You’re twice my size,” Soda mumbled, already halfway asleep. “Quit whining.”
“I should’ve picked the armchair.”
“Too late,” Soda coughed, pulling the blanket closer.
“Then maybe I wouldn’t be stuck playing space heater.”
Neither of them said anything for a moment. Pony walked into the room just long enough to turn the tv on—some reruns of a western that he definitely didn’t watch—and throw his brothers a sorry glance as they laid on the couch in misery.
“Everything hurts,” Soda murmured eventually.
“Tell me about it,” Darry sighed.
A minute later, their father walked in the front door, covered in snow with a grocery bag in hand. He took one look at the disaster on the couch before he set the bag down on the table and pulled out a bottle of pills.
“It looks like someone wrung you two out and left you to dry,” he said softly as he passed them the medicine.
“Feels like it too,” Darry said, eager to accept the pair of pills. “And like they broke half my back in the process.”
Soda whimpered and nodded along in agreement, too tired to say anything else.
Mrs. Curtis reentered the room, handing Darry a mug of tea and placing a second one on the coffee table for when Soda woke up, placing washcloths over their foreheads, tucking Darry in under another blanket, and turning the lights onto their dimmest setting, all the while ignoring their half-hearted complaints.
She settled in the armchair and picked up her knitting. Before she could make a stitch, she found her eyes wandering back to her boys, tangled together in a mess of blankets and limbs on the couch, Soda sliding closer and closer to the floor with each passing second and Darry trying hard to look like he didn’t enjoy being coddled.
“You two are adorable when you’re sick,” she said softly, finally turning back to the scarf she was working on.
Darry wanted to protest, but he was exhausted. He glanced over at Soda, who was mere seconds away from sleep, and realized that it wasn’t worth his effort to resist anymore.
Pony watched from the dining room table as his brothers drifted to sleep wrapped in warmth, exhaustion, and the unspoken feeling of love that always seemed to radiate from their home…
____________________________
“But anyway,” Pony said, bringing them all back to the present, “Dad took the picture. I remember. He was trying to show me how to use the camera, and you two had finally passed out after dragging yourselves to work and school, then complaining all night. He said something like, ‘This is what real love looks like — suffering in unison.’”
Soda laughed “That sounds like dad.”
“Then he made me a grilled cheese and told me I was an ‘agent of destruction.’”
“That you were,” Darry confirmed, “it took us days to recover.”
“Ma missed work for at least two days,” Soda recalled.
“She didn’t want to leave when we insisted we would be okay,” Darry added, glancing back down at the picture. “And I’m pretty sure you almost passed out in the shower as soon as she left.” He nudged Soda’s shoulder.
“Did not,” Soda retorted.
Pony couldn’t help but snicker.
“We watched way too much Bonanza that afternoon,” Darry remembered fondly.
Soda took the pictures from him, flipping through them again and pausing on the one of their whole family on the porch.
“I can’t believe dad kept all these,” Ponyboy said softly.
“I can’t believe these are the ones he chose to keep,” Soda added.
“I guess he was right,” Darry said. His brothers both stared at him with perplexed expressions. “This is what real love looks like.”
He watched as it clicked in their brains. Their parents loved them—they’d loved them so much—that it didn’t matter if it was mundane moment, the best day of their lives, or the end of the world. That love was captured forever in stills that lived in a beaten up toolbox that they’d never even opened.
Ponyboy tucked the photos back in the corner of the box, where they would stay until the boys needed another reminder of their parents’ unconditional love.
He gently closed the box. Its mystery was gone, but its sentiment remained.
“Well,” Darry sighed, “looks like that door is going to have to wait until tomorrow.”
“You want a grilled cheese?” Pony offered, standing up to go to the kitchen.
Darry and Soda looked at one another, then back to Pony as they stood up and followed him to the kitchen.