A/N: Last chapter. Bonus points to anyone who can figure out the two things that are up with Kathy in this chapter. Not one, but two! And don't say she's pregnant, 'cause she already is! Thanks to everybody who reviewed and helped along the way! Cookies to all! And also...last chapter! Get yo' dibs in before they're gone, y'all!

I am nine years old, wishing for some sympathy. Tim can't offer me any right now—he's holding Angela up to a woman who will take us in for the night. I turn and scuff my foot a little against the ground. He told me that that's the way kids get adopted—if they look real sad and cute, like they do in the movies. But I saw us in a reflection passing by the television repair shop—disheveled, tired, red, dirty as pig's ears. I kept thinking to myself there was no way the lady'd let us in. Besides, Angela's nose kept running and she'd been screaming all day.

The inside of a house is filled with warmth. It's the first time I know what a furnace is. There's a loud clock in the kitchen, and upstairs is where she put Angie—in a bed on the floor in a small, dark room with blue wallpaper. Tim would tell me later that she miscarried a baby boy.

He never told me that the lady who took us in hung herself that night.

I went down a few blocks to borrow Dean's old XLCH Sportster. I sniffed as I kicked the stand out. Have you ever smelled something with your mouth? Not tasting, I mean, but not smelling it fully with your nose? Yeah—that. I smelled fire in my mouth. Fire poured down my throat from the flavors of gas and leather the chopper gave off. Dean had a good girl, I'll say that. Maybe I'll get myself one one of these days.

Tim never knew it, but I knew how to drive a motorcycle ever since I was ten. Bobby Jay gave me secret lessons in exchange for not picking on him anymore. Almost killed the two of us when he popped a wheelie going down Route 45 one night. His dad laid the leather his ass. And me? I split before the fuzz showed.

I wanted to go alone. Besides, I needed fresh air slapping my face to wake me up, and I didn't really wanna get trapped in that gas chamber the twins had smoked up in the back seat of their Continental.

Try not to get bugs in your teeth, Dean said.

I tried to think about only that as I drove to the cemetery. Wasn't working too well—the air had been blue and bright. Too blue. Too bright. I wished I could see that kind of bright blue again. But I knew I wasn't.

I slumped against the wall in the shower this morning. I almost couldn't get up. Now I know what you're thinking, and no, I was perfectly sober...it's...it's just...it's just the easiest way of making you think you're not crying, is when you're in the shower and the water's stabbing your face.

I am ten years old when I first try to climb an electric fence.

Angie stares at me, wide-eyed.

"Whaddya lookin' at, small fry?" I say. "Get outta here!"

"Hey, I ain't no small fry!" she huffs, putting her hands on her hips.

"Big cod, whatever—go home!"

Someone throws a rock at me. It stings my face and knocks me down before I can even stand upright. If I could stand upright, that is.

"You're outta your territory, kid," Angela says indignantly, even though the kid is a few years taller and older than her. He looks like he could pick her up and squash her in his hands. He has an amused look on his face that I'd come to hate for years.

"Name's Winston," he says, taking out a match. "Yours is mud."

"We came as soon as we could," people I never knew I knew kept saying. "I'm so sorry."

It seemed awfully funny to me that people cried for you when you died, but never blinked twice at cutting you out of their lives when you were alive. But I know better now. Now I know what death is. It's a wake-up call to everybody living. We get so caught up in our lives, we don't even remember who really is the rock beneath our feet. Then death comes; someone gets cut out of the big picture somewhere, and we realize we got a gaping hole in the photograph we never knew was even there.

Tim always said I thought too much, that I should stop torturing myself. But it seemed funny he'd say that; the kids who thought too much were fucking A-list smarties, like Ponyboy and Angie. I'd always laugh in his face. Me, thinking too much? Well, fuck me tender—I definitely didn't fit that bill. There were some things I did without thinking—who'dya think jacked that liquor store six months ago, the fuckin' tooth fairy?—but when I finished, I'd torture myself..or my mind would, anyway. So I guess the old guy had been onto something. No one ever had to send me to jail to get punished. That was all me. The things that came afterward were just icing on the cake—things I could deal with better than being locked up inside my own head. Sometimes I'd think I was the one who killed Mom and Dad. Sometimes, in jail, I'd go for days on end without eating, thinking they wouldn't want me to.

It's like Darry said...we could all be sick inside...if the right thing came along.

And who did Tim drive to the reformatory twice? I don't know. But it wasn't me. The real me hid behind his shadow; and now the real me was standing blind in the sun.

I am eleven years old when I first learn where babies come from.

Angela hates sleeping alone during a thunderstorm. Her black head lay atop Tim's chest. Her fists clutch at his shirt, which is damp with her drool. She pins Tim's arm. Eight years old and already she's a ton of bricks. But he doesn't seem to mind it too much.

"Tim," I say, shaking his arm a little. "Hey, Timmy."

He cracks one eye open, shifting his arm carefully.

"What?"

"They come from big white birds," I say. "The kids down the street said so."

He looks at me, then down at Angie. Then he closes his eyes, yawns, and says: "I know."

I went out for a smoke. Someone stood outside the back door of the church.

"Curly," she said.

"Kathy," I said.

She watched me as I threw my stick into the brush.

"I wanna talk to you about something," she said.

I shrugged.

We walked over to a little stone stoop that jutted from the door, where she sat down. She sank just like Tim had. Everybody must sink when they're sick, I thought. Must be something in the air.

"I'm sorry about your sister," she said, watching a few birds peck for seeds in a patch of grass nearby.

"Yeah, well," I said, kicking a part of the ground in with my toe, scattering the birds, "a whole lotta people been sorry for a whole lotta things lately."

"She told me Tim was sick."

"She say anything else?"

"No. Just that he was sick."

It didn't matter now, but I let out a little sigh of relief.

"You know," she said. "I never told anyone this."

She looked down at her belly.

"He means everything to me," she said quietly, "and he ain't even born yet...but it don't mean he's not real. I feel like I known him a million years...and Mom and Dad tried telling me he ain't real. They tried to—to—but I couldn't. They kicked me out, so I stayed with Mrs. Matthews. She's a godsend. I don't know what I would've done if it wasn't for—"

"Two-Bit?" I said.

"He's...gone...now..." She smiled a slow smile at her stomach, blinking hard. Her voice dropped to a whisper. "...but that don't mean he's not real."

I said nothing.

"You probably think I'm being all mushy and stuff. Keith did, too."

"Kathy," I said. "He loved you."

He didn't say it, but he did. And she knew it. She'd always known. Probably always will. There's something about those people who'll never forget the first person they loved...you can see it in their faces.

I thought briefly about Angie.

Kathy bit her bottom lip, nodding slowly. She didn't say anything for a long time, so I started to get up—

"Curly."

I looked down at her. She didn't meet my eyes, but was cradling the globe that held the baby she almost lost...now three times. I lowered my eyes; I probably shouldn't have said anything about Two-Bit.

She said: "Some people would understand more than you think."

I am twelve years old, getting my first lesson in patience.

I can hear his voice screaming through the water, but through a long, dark tunnel. It's early morning. I'm on the ground sucking stones, trying to breathe, but all I can inhale is the sour sting of ice cold water seeping through my lungs.

"Gonna take that back, grease?" they ask me.

I say: "No."

One of them grabs my hair and dunks me in again.

"You can hold your breath longer than that," he says. His voice is the thick of a dream. I can hear the valves of my heart swing open and shut, loud as bass.

They shove me in again. It's at the back of The Dingo, inside the freezer where they keep ice water to store the sodas in. One of the workers was a double agent, and I threatened to tell. You should know the rest.

They shove me at the bottom of the pool-thing again. I can't fight back—they've got another two of them pinning my arms behind my back. I twist, I jerk, I buck, but they keep piling—I swear, they're like rabbits—they keep multiplying.

They wait longer with every turn...my eyes burn with the cold of the ice...one...two...three...I can't breathe. I've lost the zen of the cold. I can't breathe, is all I think, and then I start to panic. I can't fight back—I need to go up; that's all I want. Up; up; up; oh sweet Lord, I need up.

They keep me under until the bubbles stop coming.

Why was life peaceful only after the violence was done? I don't mean I never been a dove or any hippie shit like that, but—but why did the dust settle only after somebody died for it? Was it because we—I—wouldn't notice it otherwise? No one was there to tell me why the candles' silence somehow hung lighter in the air than Tim's silence. Why the sky had been bluer and brighter only after Angel's blues and brights had faded. Why I shouldn't feel like jumping in the ground along with my brother and sister.

Everybody looked at me. Their eyes bored into my face. The minute I snapped, they'd light the fuse: Is he okay? He's only got 'imself now, poor old fucker. Wonder what happened there. I wasn't sure if I wanted to be there when the bomb went off.

But I realized halfway during "Ave Maria" that if I just sat there, being silent, I'd be no better than Tim ever was. If I kept my mouth closed, the bitch would win, and go off to another family, somehow, somewhere, and rip them apart one by one.

I am twelve when I first see Tim cry. Tears roll silently down his face, in large, leaking streams. Dally slings an arm around his shoulder, reigning him in. Tim sinks into himself, his face contorted with rage and confusion.

I am twelve years old when I first die in the ER.

They're expecting me. I can't go back—

"There's something you don't know about Tim," I said. "Something I think you should know."

It's now or never.

"Tim was born with something called MS," I said. "It's when your brain doesn't make your nerves the way it should. Imagine lying face-down on a bed of nails and having a rock sit on your chest. You'll have MS. It can't be cured. He had it every day of his life—it affected him all his life. It'd do funny things to him, and they changed from day to day...we didn't know if he'd flare up or just wear himself out."

I paused for a minute, studying the ground.

"I know a few of you saw him lying on the ground the day of..." I paused again. "...the shooting...you saw me pound on his chest. He, uh, he wasn't having a heart attack. That was an episode. Sometimes he'd start twitching, you know, have an episode like a seizure, and he wouldn't breathe. I used to have to pump on his chest to get him to start breathin' again. He had episodes like that almost every day. We just didn't know when they would come, or, if they came, how bad they'd be. But he hid it real well; he hid it because, for the most part, most people couldn't see it. They just saw Tim. And he hid it for years 'cause he thought everyone would start singling him out if he didn't."

Fuckin' tough, I saw a wide-eyed Dennis mouth to his brother.

"Fuckin' tough."

I see him trying to form the words. He can't.

They bring those paddles down on me, and I'm suddenly jerked down the tunnel and back into my body like a rubber band being snapped back in. The machines whir to life. Then everybody in the room scatters, and they drug me up so bad, I never remember any of that until years later.

It's the first time I realize that was Tim's way of saying "I love you."

"My sister—" I have to finish; I need to— "—was pregnant."

There was a murmur among them.

I looked down; Kathy's eyes were quiet and blue.

So I continued.

I am thirteen years old when they first haul my ass to the station. "Welcome to the show, kid," Dally says. He's being put in for Jiffy-Pop—arson—when all he was doing was throwing lighters on the sidewalk 'cause he couldn't afford sparklers for the Fourth of July. He's drenched in lighter fluid; one whiff of the stuff makes my throat swell up.

When Tim gets there, the first thing he does is whip me with the flat side of his leather belt. He doesn't say anything. He unbuckles it right then and there, goes to the bathroom, sticks his arm out, waves his hand, and tells me to "C'mere."

Winston laughs as he hears Tim whip me in the bathroom of the police station.

Last rites, people came and went. My hands were still cold. Shaking. Need a light.

"Steve and Cade go home already, Curtis?" I called out.

He nodded. Never seen him in anything but a roofing get-up before. He looked so spiffed-up I woulda mistaken him for a Soc.

"Winston?"

"Police took the body," he said, running a hand through his hair.

I spat on the ground. Fuck the police.

"Tim said you was goin' into the reformatory for the next six months," he said. "What happened? You get good behavior or somethin'?"

"Nah," I said. "I bust out the first night."

He coughed as he shook his head. "Man, you won't never change."

I shrugged.

He didn't say anything else, just stuck his hands in his pockets.

We stared at the ground for a while.

I am fourteen years old when I learn where babies come from.

...I know.

"Curly," he said finally.

I looked behind me.

He said: "You know the door's always unlocked."

I looked at him for a minute. Then I glanced at the horizon. Everything sank into the red cup of dusk, gathering the blood of the sun.

I said: "I'll think about it."

Darry smiled a small smile.

Then I kicked the stand, and I was off.

The End.