Summary: It's 1967; Tim Shepard is finally coming home after serving a year at the state prison in McAlester for a crime he swears he didn't commit, and Curly has anticipated that his life will go back to normal once his brother is home. But just because time has passed doesn't mean everything stays the same…

Disclaimer: I do not own The Outsiders.

Author's Note: In A Car with a Beautiful Boy is the rewritten version of my first Shepard story I posted on this site years ago called Shattered Glass. If you've been on here long enough you might remember it (hopefully you don't, since it was poorly written and harshly abandoned within three months and eight chapters, ha). Thankfully Shattered Glass has been deleted since June 2010, but the plot has stayed with me since. So much has happened to me in the past-almost-three years that there are some situations I've wanted characters to live through, and by rewriting Shattered Glass - exploring Tim's, Curly's, and Angela's world again - it's not only given me the opportunity to recognize my faults but to grow and improve as a writer as well.

So far, I've written the first half of In A Car…, which has sixteen chapters. I've yet to pound out the remaining chapters, due to school and the holidays and moving to a new house (gah), but aim to finish up soon - the quicker, the better. This is more of a prologue than a first chapter, but reviews are lovely if you have the time to leave one; I hope you enjoy reading In A Car with a Beautiful Boy as much as I've enjoyed writing it!

"I've watched sixty seven people die, and at the moment of truth I looked into their eyes and I knew - and they knew - they got what they deserved. But what if that's not what happens, if you don't get what you deserve?"

- Dexter

xxx

If you asked someone what word would define Curly Shepard the best, they would probably answer with stupid - but if anything, over the last year he had proved this accusation wrong. He was street smart; he knew the score like it was imprinted on the back of his hand and could count how many times the counselor at the state penitentiary in McAlester sighed in defeat at not getting a word past him.

He could remember the exact date when the first eviction notice showed up in the mailbox, and then the ones following after that. Dumbass was a word that Tim liked to call him often, Angela throwing in jackass every once in a while to show that she actually cared enough to call him something other than his birth name, Charles, which he hated. In response to this, Curly would just grin and say "took you long enough", which resulted in either a) Tim punching him in the arm hard enough to leave a bruise and telling him to "back the fuck off lest you wanna get hurt", or b) Angela running off in a huff.

The difference between the two brothers' minds was simple: Tim had the memory of an elephant, remembering the smallest details no matter how much he didn't want to, while Curly had the hardest trouble retaining the simplest of facts. By the time the younger brother was in first grade, he was far behind, barely managing to spell his first and last names; and by the time he was sixteen, after waking up the next morning in someone's backyard - two blocks from his own house - he'd vowed to himself that he would be able to find his way home the next time, drunk as he was.

Of course, being street smart had many disadvantages. Curly's poor grades in school showed it: he barely found an ounce of patience to pay attention, and the way he held his head too high as he walked down the halls showed to anybody watching how much he could care less about an education. His blue eyes, wide and glaring, would dance with ignorance at the sight of a greaser girl's short skirt, mouth set into the infamous sneer he'd perfected from years of watching Tim do so.

His love for parties didn't help that much either, but who was Curly to blame? Buck's was just an easy way to escape his brother's shouting, his parents' constant fighting and Angela's mood swings. Alcohol was one of his closest friends - except that Curtis kid, Pony, but he wasn't allowed to do jackshit without his brothers hounding on him about it - which left Curly to his own devices. Usually he'd just go on by his lonesome or drag one of the Shepard gang round, but most of the time, everyone always gave the same excuse - they were, apparently, "too fucking busy to hang around with punk kids" like him.

As Curly sat in the back of his fourth period English class, taking a test on some book he never read, he almost regretted popping his head into the roadhouse the night before.

Almost.

The bell rang, dismissing class, and the headache he'd woken up with, once a dull throbbing, was now making his brain pound against his skull. His least favorite subject had finally ended, and Curly, proud of his lack of effort, grabbed his measly pile of books and walked through the maze of desks to the front of the room. His uncompleted test fell on top of all the others as he sauntered out into the packed hall, already agonizing over his decision to come to school.

Curly was walking through a group of Socs when he saw the flash of auburn hair amidst the crowd. The color, still half-bleached from that terrible dye job in Windrixvillle, belonged to none other than Ponyboy Curtis - exactly who, Curly thought as he made his way over, was looking for.

The hallway began to thin out, but he still had to yell Pony's name over the drone of voices. Hearing his name, Ponyboy turned around from his locker, confused, resisting the temptation to roll his green eyes.

Shaking his head - in disbelief or anger, Curly couldn't tell - Pony turned his attention back to entering his combination, three numbers Curly had lazily memorized in case he ever needed to hide something and had no place to put it. Bored, Curly yawned and leaned against the row of lockers, watching his friend shove a book inside and take out another one.

"What is it now, Shepard?" Pony asked, slamming the rusty door shut in his friend's face. Although he was shorter than Curly, he walked faster than the other boy did and was amused at how Curly was out of breath by the time they reached the front doors.

The crisp October air greeted them as they walked outside and left the stale air behind for the smell of burning leaves and car exhaust. When they were a safe distance away from the main entrance, Ponyboy sighed.

"What do you want?" he said. His cheeks were flushed; the tips of his ears turned the slightest shade of pink. There was a bite to the wind and Curly shoved his hands deep inside his jacket pockets, glad he'd worn it this morning.

It was fifth period and lunch had just started: the hippies ate in the courtyard, the Socs and middle-classes crammed themselves into the cafeteria, and the greasers hung around the DX or The Strip.

"You gotta light or not, Curtis?" Curly put his hand on the hood of a car that wasn't his, drumming his fingers on the red metal. He took out a cigarette and offered one to Ponyboy, who politely refused. Although he was still highly intimidated by the older boy and knew to never mess with a Shepard - especially with one currently incarcerated and the other fresh out of the reformatory - Ponyboy obliged and handed his lighter over.

Curly lit up his cigarette and took a long drag, surveying the parking lot for any familiar faces that belonged to his brother's gang. After school the parking lot was where everything went down, from gang fights to drug deals to gossiping girls. Besides the two hoods, it was pretty much vacant besides a few stragglers who were mulling around a Mustang a few parking spaces down.

"Sorry about your brother, Curly," Ponyboy said, not sure what else there was to contribute.

Curly shrugged the makeshift apology off - it wasn't like a few words would bring Tim back anytime soon. "Don't worry about it, man. Tim will take care of himself. Always have, always will." His eyes were distant when he said this, a faraway look in them.

Ponyboy nodded, shifting from foot to foot. "How long does he have left?"

"Two weeks," Curly answered, his voice a higher pitch than it should've been. He didn't want to sound excited, but it was hard to hide.

"Well, Shepard," Pony said, stepping on a leaf and crunching it beneath his shoe, "I gotta go. You, uh, goin' back inside?"

Curly smirked around his cigarette and shook his head 'no'. "Nah, I'm gonna stay out here for a while, maybe go back in later. It depends."

Ponyboy took this as a cue to leave and did so, going back to the place from where they'd left moments earlier. Curly popped an elbow up on the car's hood, took one last inhale of his dying cigarette and then tossed the butt to the ground, grinding it into the asphalt with the heel of his boot.

It was the middle of the day and Curly was exhausted, drained from the cold, gray weather and having to adjust to the heavy amount of coursework he'd missed for skipping so many classes. He could hear Tim laughing at him, a dull buzzing sound in his ears, telling him that the more he didn't show up, the more lost he would become. And as much as he wanted to, Curly couldn't blame anyone but himself; sometimes he could be as ditzy as those broads Tim brought home.

Sighing, Curly glared at the sky and decided that school could wait. After all, he was a Shepard, and if Tim could do whatever he wanted, so could Curly. Thinking this, he crossed the parking lot and kept on walking. Towards home or fate, he still wasn't sure which one he wanted to encounter first.

xxx

"Last time I'm gonna say this, Shepard, and then the deal is off. You gonna call somebody or what?"

The steel bench Tim was sitting on was cold and uncomfortable and the material of his orange jumpsuit, along with the stubble on his jaw from not shaving, was irritating him. There were shadows under his eyes that weren't there last week from worrying about how his second-in-command was handling the gang in his absence, and once again Tim remembered that he wasn't the only one in the room.

"Uh, yeah," he said. For the first time that evening, a small smile of satisfaction spread across the officer's face and Tim's frown deepened.

Each night, he was given five minutes to call whomever he wanted but never did. He preferred to read Angela's letters - eight to ten pages of her pouring her heart out to him like he was her therapist, signed with a Love you, Ang. And, if he was lucky, a small dab of her perfume on the pink stationery.

The officer left and Tim got up from the bench, his stomach empty and head swimming. He reached for the phone and pressed it to his ear, dialed the phone number he'd known since he was five and waited for the other line to pick up.

It took less than three rings for him to hear another sound besides his breathing.

"Ang, it's me," he started, "listen -"

" Tim?" Angela interrupted, sounding surprised; her voice was high-pitched and squeaky, what Tim imagined a mouse's to be if it could speak. She sounded so close to him, yet in reality she was whole cities away.

"- I need to talk to Curly. Put him on the phone, Angela."

"Curly?"

"Jesus Christ, kid, you gotta repeat every damn thing I say?"

"Well, he ain't here right now."

Fuck, if he didn't sound desperate already then he sure as hell did now. "Lemme talk to him, Ang. I gotta talk to him."

"Tim, I just said he ain't here right now! What do you want me to do, go out and look for him?"

Goddamn it, Tim thought, rubbing at his eyes. "Angela, you better give Curly the phone right now or I'm gonna make sure you starve for a whole fucking week when I get outta here."

She huffed, cursed something along the sides of shit and repeated, "Like I said, he ain't here! What don't you understand?"

"I…" he said, and then found himself stopping. "Fine, can you tell him something?"

There was rustling in the background, drawers opening and paper rustling.

"Tell him to leave Wade alone, alright? It's my shit to deal with when I get out." He heard Angela write this down, mumbling to herself. "And don't let him get away with anything stupid, Ang. We don't need the state on our asses anymore than they are now."

"Okay," she said, and he let out a breath he didn't know he was holding in, relieved.

"Thanks, girlie," he said, "you're not so bad after all."

"Shut up, Tim," she growled, and hung up before he could say goodbye. He put the phone back in the cradle just as keys jingled outside the door and the knob rattled.

The officer stepped back into the room, cuffs in hand. "You done?" he asked.

"Yeah," Tim said, making sure to catch the other man's eye, "I am."