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Darry Curtis Jr. was pretty sure he was a failure in every sense of the word, right down to the simple task of being his dead father’s namesake.
“I don’t think he wants to die,” Steve said carefully, “But sometimes he wishes he were dead instead of Johnny.”
The two were sitting across from each other at the kitchen table. Ponyboy was out with Soda getting burgers for lunch, leaving Darry and Steve alone with each other.
“Do you think he’s gonna try anything?”
“No. He knows I’m telling you, too. I found out this morning n’ he said he told me because he wanted you to know.”
Darry didn’t know what to do. His body seemed to shut itself down of its own accord. The more Steve talked, the less he heard. His little brother, his Ponyboy, wished he were dead. He knew there was something he had to do, to say, to make it better. That was why Pony wanted him to know in the first place. But try as he might, Darry couldn’t be his parents. He couldn’t bring his dead friends back to life, and he couldn’t make his brother want to live, so instead he just sat there, shocked and silent.
-
Ponyboy was surprised when Darry didn’t pull him aside that day. In fact, his brother didn’t say anything to him at all. It reminded him of . . . before. Without wanting or meaning to, Pony remembered the conversation he’d had with his brothers the day after they all found out about Darry’s nightmares. They had all been seated at the kitchen table, picking at whatever food had been on their plates. While none of them had tried to weasel out of the talk, no one was particularly looking forward to it.
“So,” Sodapop said, not looking up from his dinner, “I think we need to set a few rules for each other.”
Pony had heard this kind of conversation before. Their parents used to set up all kinds of rules for their children so that none of them ended up biting their brothers’ heads off. There had come a time, once everyone had gotten older, where the rules were no longer needed, but up until that point they had been a fact of life.
“I’ll go first,” Sodapop continued, “If something is wrong, we have to tell someone. It doesn’t have to be one of us. It can be Steve or Two-bit or fucking Tim Shepherd for all I care, but this whole ‘I ain’t gonna worry no one’ shit won’t fly no more. Savvy?”
After getting subdued, but affirmative responses from both his brothers, the meeting went on. There were other rules, ones less relevant to the situation at hand, but they had all revolved around honesty. About seeking help before it was too late.
Before there was another Dallas Winston.
-
Darry still didn’t know what to do. He’d thought that maybe if he gave himself a few hours, he could come up with something, but no. It had been a whole two days and there was still nothing. He could feel Ponyboy drawing further away from him as the hours went on. He had to stop this. He couldn’t cause another Windrixville. No one would survive it.
He might be a failure, but he hoped he could still do this one thing for his little brother.
“Two-bit,” Darry said, “I gotta talk to ya. It’s important. It’s . . . it’s about Ponyboy.”
-
Keith was getting deja vu.
“An’ I just . . . I don’t know what to do. I dunno how I can help him. I wasn’t prepared for this, I-”
Darry laid his head onto the table with a soft thunk. To Keith, it almost looked like an admission of defeat.
“-I can’t do it right. I ain’t done anything right since Ma and Pop.”
Darry didn’t know what to do? Well, Keith sure didn’t, either. He’d never seen his friend like this before, not even in that horrible week where Pony and Johnny went missing. This wasn’t just about the situation at hand, he realized quickly, it was everything. Darry was overwhelmed, had been overwhelmed this whole time with thoughts of bills and brothers and no time to spare for himself. Every day he was running himself ragged, no finish line in sight, and he never said a word about it. And dumbass Keith was just staring like an idiot because he didn’t know what to do. He didn’t know, but he had to do something, so he started with a simple hand on Darry's shoulder.
Who knew that would be all it took to make him break?
-
“Soda, you up? I gotta talk to ya about somethin’ important.” he heard Pony whisper.
Sodapop had been half-asleep, but that had woken him up quicker than a blow to the head.
“What’s up?” he said, trying not to betray his heart pounding in his ears and throat.
“It’s about Darry,” Pony answered, and Soda’s heart thudded even louder.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. A few days ago I was out smokin’ on the porch with Steve, an’ I said some things that I didn’t mean, but also kinda did mean, and I knew he was gonna tell Darry about ‘em, but now Darry ain’t talkin’ to me no more and I think it’s ’cause of what I said to Steve that Steve said to him, and I just . . . ”
Pony sounded like he was nearing tears.
“I dunno what to do anymore.”
Sodapop sat up and pulled his brother closer to him.
“What did ya say to him, honey?” he asked, already fearing the answer. Ponyboy seemed so reluctant to answer that Soda was about to drop it, but before he could take the question back his little brother was talking again.
“I said . . . I said that I wished it were me.”
It took a moment for the words to sink in, for Sodapop to understand what Pony had said. To realize that he was talking about Johnny. That the wish of death had crossed his little brother’s mind. He realized he’d been silent for far too long when he heard Ponyboy’s voice again.
“You ain’t mad at me, are ya?”
He sounded so small. He was so small. He was young and didn’t deserve what had happened to him. None of them did, he knew, but especially not Ponyboy. Especially not his baby brother. Soda found himself too choked up to speak; instead, he wrapped his arms tightly around Pony and shook his head fervently.
I’m so glad you told me, but I hate that you feel like this, he wanted to say. I want to make the world good for you. I want you to be safe and happy forever but I know you can’t because I know you’ll never feel whole ever again. Not without Johnny Cade.
Soda still didn’t know what to do, so he just held his brother tight as they both cried.
-
“And I don’t know what to do, either,” Soda said to Steve, “I mean, I know we all wish it woulda gone differently. None of us want Johnny and Dally gone. But it never crossed my mind that Ponyboy could feel like that. Why would he want that? Did we do something wrong? Did I do something wrong?”
“You didn’t,” he responded.
“But what if I did?”
Steve sighed. He knew this conversation was coming from the moment Soda clocked into the DX looking like a lost puppy, but that didn’t make him feel any more prepared for it. If he wasn’t talking to his best friend, he would never even consider saying what he said next, but he could never seem to resist Sodapop’s big doe eyes.
“Look, it ain’t you,” he said, more firmly this time, “And I know because I kinda see where the little horse is comin’ from. Now, don’t freak out on me-“
It was too late. Soda was already freaking out. Steve decided to continue anyway.
“-but I know he doesn’t wanna die or nothin’. He’s just wishin’ it coulda turned out any other way. He ain’t really gonna try to die because it wouldn’t change anything, and he knows that.”
Steve realized he’d been staring at his hands the whole time he was talking. They were shaking. As he tore his eyes away from them and looked at Sodapop, he realized he’d made his best friend cry. He couldn’t fix it. He didn’t know what to do.
-
Everywhere Ponyboy went, he saw little pieces of Johnny Cade. Dallas Winston was a rarer sight, but finding those pieces of him hurt just as much. As he sat on the back porch with his sketchbook, watching Johnny dancing in the sway of the grass, the words stay gold flashed through his mind.
“I’m tryin’,” he thought aloud, “I really am.”
Dally was in the sharp tips of the grass blades, glinting in the sunlight with the morning dew. Pony shuddered a little as a gust of wind blew by, whispering Johnny’s name. He thought he might’ve heard his own name, too, but no one else should’ve been awake at this hour.
Except for Johnny, he thought bitterly, closing his sketchbook and tucking his knees into his chest.
Johnny had always been an early riser, though Ponyboy hadn’t realized the extent of his habit until they were sleeping in the same place at Windrixville. Oftentimes, his friend would wake up before he did, and he’d find him smoking out back, watching the dew-slicked grass dance in the wind. Pony hardly ever craved cigarettes anymore. He hadn’t had one since he got pneumonia three weeks ago.
I wish I’d gotten sick earlier, he thought, maybe then Johnny wouldn’t have bought me cigarettes. Maybe then there would have been nothing to set that church on fire.
Tears started to slip down his face without his permission.
I don’t know how to stop feeling this way, he thought. I don’t know what to do.
“I wish you’d come back,” he whispered into the air, “I miss you. Glory, I miss you, Johnny.”
-
Ponyboy hadn’t heard him the first time Darry said his name. He almost didn't want to try again, but his little brother needed him. He didn’t know what to do, but that didn’t mean he could just stand there and let him go through all that alone. No, Darry would make sure Pony was never alone again.
Pony lifted his head at the sound of the door creaking open, but he didn’t turn to face him.
“I heard you were feelin’ bad about Johnny,” he said simply. It was an olive branch, he hoped. Ponyboy could respond with as much or as little as he wanted, and no matter what it would be progress.
“Yeah. I am.”
Darry sat down next to him. A silence settled between them.
“I’m not going to kill myself,” Pony blurted out.
“I know,” Darry said, and he meant it.
“I just . . . it’s so hard, with Johnny gone. Dally too. I see them everywhere, and I can’t help but think they didn’t deserve to die.”
“They didn’t.”
“But they died anyway.”
“I know.” Darry was close to tears.
“And they just left us alone.”
“I know,” Darry cried, and his tears triggered Ponyboy to start bawling too.
Before either of them knew it, they were holding each other as tight as they could.
“It isn’t fair,” Pony wailed, “It isn’t fair!”
And all Darry could do was hold him, because it wasn’t fair. Nothing was fair. Not their parents, not Johnny, not Dally, none of it.
“I don’t know what to do. What do we do?”
There was a long silence. Pony was begging him for an answer that he just didn’t have, even if he would have given everything to get it.
“I don’t know,” Darry admitted, “I just don’t know. All I know is that we can’t do it by ourselves. We need each other.”
“I need you,” Ponyboy said.
“I’ll be here. I’ll always be here.” Darry hugged him even tighter, tears flowing freely between the both of them.