This story, which takes place about a year after 'See My Friends' ends, is the final chapter in the 1965 – 1970 series, focusing largely on the relationship between Dallas Winston and Lucy Bennet. It is situation in the 'Arrogance and Aggression' universe, and each story connects. They can be ready in any order, but this story comes off the immediate heels of the drama in that story.

You might also want to read my one shot, "Curious," for some context in this chapter, but it's not a must.

Finally, the froth that percolated throughout 'Arrogance and Aggression' and 'Impatience and Impulsivity' comes back a little bit here! It's a parting gift to this epoch in the series.

Darry Curtis said he would make the wedding cake himself.

In June 1969, he took his girl, Lynnie Jones, out to dinner on the other side of town. They shared a plate of baked ziti, Lynnie's favorite food, and as they took a walk outside before heading back home, Darry got down on one knee and proposed.

Lynnie Jones, of course, was quick to accept. She had been married before, when she was nineteen years old, and her previous husband (Big Jim, which should have been a clue from the start – what twenty-year-old kid goes by Big Jim?) left her for his secretary like a cliché. But Darry was different. He was a family man, through and through. He worked hard to provide for his loved ones, including his brothers and sister, who was married with her own son. Darry was the kind of man that a girl like Lynnie dreamt about. Her son, Jimmy, who was four at the time, was absolutely enchanted with him. She didn't even need to think about it when she saw him kneeling there, his mother's ring in his hand. It was too easy to say yes.

But when Darry insisted on baking his own wedding cake, no one was angrier than Lucy Bennet. Lucy and Lynnie were cousins, and when they were growing up, they were almost as close as sisters. Lucy knew how much a wedding a man she loved meant to Lynnie, and she wouldn't stand for a homemade chocolate cake. They fought about it on May 1, 1970 – exactly two weeks before Darry and Lynnie were slated to marry.

"That don't make any sense," Darry said. "You always loved my cakes, Lucy. What makes this wedding any different?"

"What makes it different is that it's my cousin's wedding," Lucy said. "And this one's going to be forever."

"Gee, thanks," Lynnie said.

"You know I meant that to be nice."

"Did ya?" Dallas Winston asked. He was Lucy's husband, with whom he would celebrate his fifth anniversary that November. "'Cause I'm pretty sure I know you, Bennet, and you almost never mean to be nice."

"No, but her niceness sure is mean," Lynnie said, grinning at her own ability to pun. "You see? Sometimes, I can have fun with language, too."

"You're a regular James Joyce," Lucy said.

"I think I'd prefer to be Gertrude Stein."

As Lucy laughed, Darry asked, "Can we have a conversation that allows people who didn't go to college and get a degree in English to join?"

"Oh, I don't have a degree in English," Lynnie said. "You knew that, honey. I have a degree in education. That's why I teach the littler ones."

"And I don't have a degree in English yet," Lucy said. "Talk to me tomorrow. I'll be able to do a lot of bragging then."

Dally couldn't help but smile at his wife – his truly formidable wife. Back in 1965, he and Lucy had gotten married on a dare posed to them by Sodapop and Sadie Curtis, a pair of mischievous twins and two of Lucy's closest friends in the world (and, though he'd never admit it, even after years of being close to them, two of Dally's closest friends as well). About a year later, Lucy got pregnant with their daughter, Elenore, who had recently celebrated her third birthday. All the while, Lucy had kept up excellent grades, and the next day, she would walk across the stage to receive her diploma. She would officially have a degree in English, like her father before her – everything she ever wanted. But there was more. In August, Lucy and Dally would pack up their apartment above Great Books, where they'd lived since their first Christmas as a married couple, and they would move to New York City. Lucy had been accepted as a doctoral student at NYU, and while everyone in the old neighborhood was thrilled for her, they weren't as thrilled to watch her pack up a moving van and take it far away.

"Ah, congratulations, Lucy!" Lynnie said. "I'm sorry if we don't seem more excited. We're … you know. Planning."

"Believe me, I understand," Lucy said. "Although maybe I don't. I never actually had a wedding."

"What?" Dally asked. "You didn't like our wedding?"

"I'd hardly call walking down to the court house in our most casual attire while Two-Bit serenaded us to an off-key rendition of 'Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me' a wedding. Would you?"

"Maybe not. But look at it this way. If I'd dropped a bunch of pretty-lookin' dimes on a wedding for you and all your friends, would we be able to move ourselves all the way over to New York for your new school?"

Lucy smiled, but her heart dropped at the same time. Just like on cue, she saw her best friend, Sadie Curtis Cade, walk up the front porch with Michael, her one-year-old son, in her arms. There were a lot of things Lucy would miss about living in Tulsa, but among them, Sadie was the one she would miss the most. The two women hadn't talked very much about what would change between them when Lucy was living on the East Coast. Instead, they liked to pretend like everything would stay the same. In a way, it would. But in more ways … they could not possibly even imagine.

Sadie knocked on the door, and Darry happily let her in. As she politely greeted everyone around her, Lucy immediately sensed that she was nervous about something. Sadie was nervous, but she didn't want anyone to know. For Lucy, that could only mean one thing. She took a step back and let it happen the way it needed to. This was one of those times when involving herself would make things much worse. Lucy used to involve herself all the time when she was a teenager – like she was the center of the universe. Then, she thought about Elenore, who was currently playing with her grandparents a few blocks away. She thought about baby Michael, too. Lucy was not the center of the universe, and neither was Sadie.

But their children were.

"Me and Michael were just out for a long walk," Sadie said.

"A lady and a baby out on their own?" Dally asked. "I dunno, Sadie. That seem like a good idea to you?"

"Dally's got a point," Darry said. "Ya might run into him from five years ago."

"It's very possible."

"It is," Lynnie agreed. "Pony's not here right now, but he makes me watch this English TV show sometimes. They go back and forth in time a lot. Who's to say Dally won't be out there waiting for you?"

"Because Dally's in here, wanting to get back to his kid," Sadie said. "And I'm not crazy, but thanks for the game."

"Any time."

Sadie rolled her eyes. It was only halfway playful. She liked Lynnie, for the most part. She was a nice woman who made a formidable lemon meringue pie and made Darry very happy. Lynnie was clever and well read, much like Sadie herself. There was no reason for Sadie not to like Lynnie. But then, of course, she remembered that Lynnie lived in her childhood home, cooked in the kitchen where her mother used to cook, and tidied up the bedroom where Sadie used to sleep. She remembered that Lynnie was Lucy's biological cousin, so no matter how many times Lucy would assure Sadie that the two of them were sisters by choice, it didn't matter. She would always have that blood connection with Lynnie. It was the kind of blood connection Sadie worried about the older she became.

"Me and Michael were in the neighborhood," Sadie said. "We're bored 'cause Johnny's at work, and I got the day off."

But Darry knew that wasn't all. He could tell by the way Sadie's eyes strained past the living room and down the hallway. He almost said something, and then Sadie did it for him.

"Is he home?" she asked.

Darry shook his head, and it just about shattered his heart. Whenever Sadie came to visit her childhood home now, it was just so that she could see Sodapop, even for a little while. Unfortunately, Soda wasn't around quite as much as he was before he'd shipped out. It was like being in the house was too much for him. Too much past, perhaps.

The thought of Soda in pain shattered Sadie's heart, too, but she made sure no one in the room could hear it. Well, almost no one. Lucy winced in pain when she saw the look on her best friend's face. She winced again when she remembered there was really nothing anybody could do about it.

"No, baby, he ain't," Darry said.

Sadie's eyes filled with panic, as they often did now that she was a mother … as they often did now that she was the twin sister of a brand-new war veteran.

"But did he …" she started. It was hard to get her breath, thinking about what Soda been through before. "Did he call?"

Darry nodded, and nearly all of the tension rushed out of Sadie's body (and Michael's and Lucy's as well).

"After his shift," Darry said. "He and Steve went out for a beer."

Sadie nodded in some sort of acknowledgment and approval. For a moment, she'd forgotten that she and Soda had been twenty-one years old since October, and it was more than legal and acceptable for him to grab a beer with his best friend after a long shift at the DX. Both of them had earned it. Still, Sadie worried. She remembered how sick and sad Soda had been on that night he got drunk when they were fifteen, shortly after their parents' accident. She didn't want to see that happen to her twin again. Evidently, she knew Soda, and he only turned to substances like cigarettes and alcohol when he felt like things were spiraling beyond his control. Now that he was a veteran, he was quickly realizing that more things were out of his control than he previously thought possible. Sadie tried not to be worried. She tried not to be worried that there were suddenly things that Soda wasn't telling her. She wondered just how long it had been going on that way. She wondered if she was the only one he was keeping in the dark.

The thought would have been funny if it wasn't so painfully true.

"Right," she finally said.

But she was disappointed. How could she not have known, automatically, whether or not Soda was in the house? She used to be able to sense him from miles away. It scared people sometimes, including Jane, and she loved to trail after Soda even more than his sister did. Now, he was a blur, caught up in the scent of grief, regret, and guilt, just like the rest of them. Sadie wished she could end his pain and confusion, but she knew better now. It wasn't her place, even if she was his twin sister.

She held Michael closer and flopped down on the couch, which Michael didn't seem to mind at all. She looked at Darry and frowned.

"I used to be so good at this," Sadie said.

It was all she knew how to say, and it was enough.

"He'll be home soon," Lynnie offered, and Sadie glared at her with such intensity, it felt like she was going to burn a hole right between Lynnie's eyes. At first, Lynnie didn't notice. She prattled on.

"Jane's due back from her shift at Jay's in less than an hour," Lynnie said. "He doesn't like to miss any time with Jane."

Eventually, when the room turned equal parts hot and ice-cold, Lynnie saw the expression on Sadie's face. It made her heart sink. Before Soda had returned home from Vietnam, Lynnie and Sadie seemed to get along just fine. Then again, perhaps getting along just fine and not seeing each other very often were two concepts that Lynnie was confusing. She cleared her throat and stood up from her seat on the couch – the seat that was normally Soda's, especially now that he was home.

"I'm gonna go check on Jimmy," Lynnie said. "He's been playing alone for a long time, and I think he'd like some company."

And so, Lynnie took off – took off for the room that used to belong to Sadie. She became very conscious of that fact on her way in, but she didn't say anything. These days, saying anything to Sadie about the way things used to be seemed like a disaster waiting to happen (or perhaps even a disaster that was already happening).

Since Soda's return, things in the Curtis family had changed rapidly and without much warning. Though Sadie was thrilled for herself and her siblings, there were moments she found herself wishing to cling to the past. When things were new and different, they were terrifying and odd, too. In March, she and Johnny had celebrated their second wedding anniversary, and in April, they celebrated Michael's first birthday. Though they only lived a few minutes away from Sadie's brothers, it still felt like an ocean was between them.

Soda's return had brought love and life back into the house and into the neighborhood; it had also brought change from which the family could never return. Before Soda returned, Sadie had given birth to Michael, who was suddenly the center of her universe. The feeling was bizarre, as for all her life up to that point, Sadie was the center of her own universe – Sadie and Soda against the world, that was. Things were different after Michael was born. She no longer felt compelled to return to the old Curtis house and build a fort of blankets in the living room with her twin brother, not letting anyone else inside unless they came with plates of food and the promise that they would leave right away. In fact, now that Sadie was Michael Cade's mother, she didn't think very much about needing to be with Soda at all. She didn't have time. And now, being back in her childhood home, even for a moment or two, those feelings of guilt for not thinking enough about her veteran twin brother were coming up and trying to pierce her heart. She wouldn't let them. Michael was in her arms, and in an hour, he would be hungry.

"He won't be long," Darry said. "You wanna sit around and wait for him?"

"Yeah," Lucy suggested. "You and I haven't caught up in awhile. I'd like it if you stayed."

"You like her better than me," Dally said.

"Of course I do. That goes without saying. Sadie, do you like me better than Johnny?"

"Obviously."

Dally frowned, and off his look, Sadie added, "It's nothin' personal. Me and Lucy swore to each other back in 1962 that we would always like each other better than our boyfriends and husbands. In Lucy's defense, I don't think anybody ever thought you would be Lucy's boyfriend, much less her husband."

"Who did you think would be Lucy's husband?" Darry asked.

"Some professor of sorts," Sadie said. "A prince, maybe."

"A prince who tutored other princes," Lucy said. "But I … I like how it ended."

Dally rolled his eyes. It was all in good nature.

Sadie eyed Lucy and Dally curiously. She knew that her next question would sound accusatory, and in a way, it would be. That didn't change the fact that she was going to ask it.

"What are the two of you doing here, anyway?" she asked. "You don't live here."

"Neither do you," Dally said.

Sadie clicked her tongue. She used to.

"We dropped by to give your brother a hard time about this whole wedding cake thing," Lucy said. "He insists on making his own cake for his own wedding."

"So what?" Sadie asked. "Darry makes great cake. I think that's how he and Lynnie met. Remember? She used it as an excuse to get Jimmy to talk to him, which was her own excuse to talk to him. It was a very weird thing."

Darry blushed. He knew Sadie was a little bit out of line. In fact, for the past two years, Sadie had been a little bit out of line. He'd hoped in that time that she would learn how to behave more politely again, but he also knew he had no right to tell her what to do. Sadie was twenty-one years old. She was a wife and a mother – an adult. For Darry, that was perhaps the scariest thought of them all. He'd regarded his siblings as children for far too long. They were not the young ones anymore.

"Well, Lynnie's my cousin," Lucy said. "And I want her Darry wedding to be the one that counts. So, I'm insisting that he listens. My parents are going to pay for a professional cake."

"Do we get to choose the flavor?" Darry asked.

"Of course," Lucy said. "It's your wedding."

"Darry!" Sadie said, which startled baby Michael in her arms. "You can't seriously take handouts from the Bennets. Remember when they tried to offer us their old couch since they were getting a new one? We don't just take gifts. We earn stuff!"

"Sadie, it's a wedding," Lucy said. "Weddings beget gifts. It's a time-honored tradition."

"One nobody took part in for us," Dally said.

"I think that has something to do with the whole 'high school, court house, married-on-a-dare' thing."

"Ya bring up a good point. Not a great point, but a good one."

Sadie wanted to say something – anything – in response, but she didn't have the time. The door opened, and in walked Jane Randle. Only she wasn't Jane Randle, per se. At any rate, she was Jane.

Jane was one of the bigger changes to come out of Soda's return in the spring of 1969. After a year of writing her letters about how he couldn't wait to marry her when he returned home, months went by, and he never mentioned marriage when she was in the room. He was even cautious to mention Darry and Lynnie's engagement in front of her. No one asked him why, but no one particularly had to. They all knew the answer. Soda hadn't been quite … right … after he returned from Vietnam. Where Steve had gotten angrier and more violent, and Two-Bit had gotten quieter and more dependent on alcohol, Soda … well, it seemed Soda had gotten younger. Suddenly, it was like the only person he could connect to was Elenore Winston, a true toddler in her own right. He never talked about work. He never talked about money. And, perhaps most shockingly, he never talked about marrying Jane.

Then, one day in July of 1969, Sadie got a phone call. It was Sodapop. Come down to the courthouse, Sadie Lou. I'm gettin' married, and you're my best woman.

And though Sadie stood by Soda that day and signed as a witness to his marriage, she couldn't help but feel terrible for Jane. Poor Jane had been madly in love with Sodapop since she was a little girl. This was not the wedding she imagined. She imagined an expensive dress (even if she had to rob a bank to get it). She imagined a spectacular reception. She imagined a cake that she was able to purchase herself, not accept from the Bennet family like a damn charity case. It wasn't like the Bennets were so rich. They were richer than the other families in the gang, but they weren't loaded. Dr. Bennet was a literature professor, not a brain surgeon, and they couldn't afford a house on the other side of town.

In the moment, Sadie shook her head. She might have been confusing a few of her resentments.

Ten months had passed since Jane and Soda got married, and in that time, Jane had finally found a way out of the old Randle house. She wondered if her father even noticed she was gone. Her mother certainly did, and though she felt somewhat confident that there were times her mother wanted to visit her, she knew that Jeannie Randle would be too tired at the end of the day. Jane tried not to hold that against her. Her mother did a lot of things, and now that Jane was turning twenty-one herself, her mother didn't have to worry about her anymore. That was the rule, or so it seemed.

After Jane moved out of her childhood home, she moved into Soda's bedroom at the Curtis place. Sadie tried not to think of it as Jane replacing her. She wasn't. After all, Sadie was his twin, and Jane was his girl – his wife. They weren't the same thing, even if it did feel (sometimes) like Sadie was married to Jane, too. Sadie had no right to be jealous of Jane. And, in truth, she wasn't. She just wasn't sure how well she could really handle all the changes in her family.

She tried to tell herself that was the only thing she was upset about – all the changes among her and her three brothers. There was nothing else Sadie could possibly have to feel angry or sad or scared about – nothing at all.

"Sadie!" Jane said when she saw her sister-in-law and nephew in the house (the house where she now lived … the house that was now, sentimentally, hers). "I wasn't expectin' you!"

"None of us were," Darry said. "She's a pleasant surprise."

"That's me," Sadie said. "But Michael and I were really just leaving. He's going to get hungry before I know it, and I don't really want to feed him in a strange place."

"But this ain't really much of a strange place," Jane said. "He's eaten here before, ain't he? I know he has."

"Well …"

"Sadie, if you're shy about the people in this house seein' your boobs, I think you're a little late for that."

Sadie turned scarlet. What gave Jane the right?

"I just don't want him to feel like he doesn't know where he is," Sadie said. It wasn't a very good answer, but it was an answer nonetheless. She hoped it would be enough for Jane and her prying (as though anything ever really was).

For a moment, it was almost like Sadie wasn't talking about Michael at all. Jane knew it, and she tried to make it better (by making it more awkward).

"You should stay," she said. "Steve and Soda are due back here any minute. I know Soda would love to see ya."

I know Soda would love to see ya. On the inside, Sadie Lou Curtis Cade was rolling her eyes. What did Jane know about what Soda wanted? They were married, but that didn't mean they could hear each other's thoughts. Only twins could do that. No matter how hard Jane tried, she could never get to that level of intimacy with her own husband.

If Sadie had been in a better mood (If Lucy hadn't been in the room, reminding her how things were really going to change in the next few months.), she probably wouldn't have been thinking that way. But she was scared and sad and unsure of where to unleash it, so she chose Jane. Jane was a safe person to be angry at. She loved so deeply that she forgave quickly. As her sister-in-law, Sadie was one person Jane was especially quick to forgive. Being angry with Jane didn't pose a real risk. Being angry with Lucy was a death sentence. So, to protect her hide, Sadie convinced herself she wasn't angry with Lucy. She convinced herself that Lucy wasn't doing anything that could make her angry.

But then Lucy would begin to talk about Manhattan, and Sadie's rage would come right back up again. It was like she was trying to kill her. Of course, maybe if Lucy did kill Sadie, it would be just that much easier for her to leave Tulsa and the old neighborhood and never come back.

"It's OK, really," Sadie said. "I don't … Michael … I'll just see Soda later."

"You keep sayin' that," Darry said. "But he told me you ain't been hangin' out a lot lately."

"Well, we've both got shit to deal with. He's married. I'm married. I got a kid. He's got Jane."

"Are you callin' me a baby?" Jane asked.

"You keep askin' questions like that, it's gonna make sense," Dally said.

"Look, we've just been busy," Sadie said.

She felt very defensive, but she didn't quite know why. Maybe because Darry was right. Maybe because she knew, consciously or unconsciously, that she had been avoiding Sodapop for the past couple of months.

"Never stopped ya before," Jane said. "I swear, when Soda first got back home, it was like ya didn't leave each other's sides."

"Like Siamese twins," Darry agreed.

Lucy pointed a finger at him.

"That's racist," she said.

"How is that racist? It's what they're called."

"Still racist."

Dally wanted to say something to the effect of, "Yeah, Darry. Look at your nephew!" But he knew that, too, wouldn't have been the most sensitive thing to say. As a husband and a father to a three-year-old who thought he must have hung the moon, Dallas Winston had dedicated the last few years of his life trying to determine what was sensitive and what wasn't. Besides, it wouldn't have been an effective comment. Johnny Cade and his kid sister, Lilly, knew they weren't all white and that their ancestors were probably from somewhere in the vastness that was Asia, but they weren't certain. No one ever told them where they came from because no one bothered enough to talk to them as people – not when they were children, anyway. Johnny and Lilly both had eyes that didn't look the same as their snow-white friends (It felt odd to say lily-white, given Lilly was the only girl in the gang who wasn't.), but Michael's eyes were all Curtis. It was one of those strange things in life. Dally remembered how Johnny pulled him aside one day, a short while after Michael was first born, and confided in him. Johnny said he was thrilled that his son looked more like Sadie and the rest of the Curtis family. At first, Dally had assumed that was because Johnny was thankful for all the help and love the Curtises had given him … the help and love he didn't receive from his own folks in his own home. But then, Johnny told him the truth. The kids at school wouldn't pull on their eyes and make fun of Michael for looking "different." They wouldn't ridicule him the same way the kids used to ridicule Johnny and Lilly. He wouldn't ever be expected to sit in the balcony at the movie theater because he wasn't white enough to sit with the white kids. No one would ever know.

Dally had always been unsure of how to talk to Johnny about that, even now that he was growing up and into himself. Then again, he'd always been unsure of how to talk to Johnny about anything. That much had been clear since Michael was born. Dally didn't like to think about it.

"It's just difficult for us to hook up now," Sadie said. "We have different responsibilities, and we live just enough away from each other."

"But you spent a whole year oceans away from each other," Jane said. "Don't you want to … I don't know … close some of those oceans?"

Sadie was tempted to ask Jane when she became such an advocate for the closeness between the Curtis twins. The year Soda was in Vietnam, Jane had done nothing but complain and worry that Soda missed Sadie more than he missed her or that he loved Sadie more than he loved her. Maybe she thought of their marriage as a victory of sorts. She was tempted to say it, but she chose not to. Michael was in her arms, and she didn't want him to absorb any of her bad behavior and petty thinking.

"I do," Sadie said slowly, and she was telling the truth. "It's just harder now that things are different."

"'To these children, Gentlemen and Ladies will henceforth be two homelands toward which each of their souls will take flight on divergent wings,'" Lucy said.

Everyone in the room turned to look at her like she was insane, including Sadie, who typically followed Lucy's referential speech. Lucy wrinkled her nose, realizing that she wasn't actually writing a paper for her father's advanced critical theory class at TU.

"It's psychoanalysis stuff," Lucy said. "Cutting edge, actually. Don't worry about it."

"Hey, that's my girl," Dally said. "Ya know, that's the stuff that got her into that doctor program."

The one that's taking me away, Lucy thought.

The one that's taking her away, Sadie thought, too.

"What were we talking about before?" Darry asked.

"How you won't let my parents buy your wedding cake," Lucy said. "But then you agreed. Then Sadie got mad."

"I did not get mad!" Sadie objected, and Michael stirred in her arms. She sighed. She really needed to remember not to act up around him. Maybe the secret was not to go into her childhood home. If she was going to be a mother, then she could not be a child. Sitting in the same places where her own mother used to braid her hair and tend to her scabby knees after a long day at Crutchfield Park was not the best place to remember her new role in life.

She wondered what Frances Curtis would think of her now.

"You seem a little mad," Darry said. "D'you wanna go some place and talk about it?"

Sadie shook her head. The part of her that was a little mad (very mad) wanted to pull Darry into the backyard and cry into his shirt, just like she had the year that Soda was overseas. But now, what would she have to cry about? Before, she was barely twenty years old, very pregnant, and terrified that her twin wouldn't make it home after all. Now, she was older, a mother, and lived just a few blocks away from the twin she'd missed so much. It seemed like she had everything (or, at least, had everything resolved). What was she crying about now? She would have asked Lucy if this was how she felt that year when Elenore was turning two, but she didn't. Lucy had resolved to move forward, and moving forward (apparently) did not mean looking back.

"We really can't stay too long," Sadie said. "Michael's gonna get hungry, and I don't wanna feed him in a strange place."

"This shouldn't be a strange place for him," Jane said. "I feel like you're here enough."

"Not as often as she used to be," Darry said.

"Would y'all shut up about how often I'm here or not here?" Sadie asked. "I've got my own life and my own family to worry about these days. I don't need to hang out in the same place where I used to pee the bed."

"You ain't the one who peed the bed," a new voice joined in on the conversation from the front door. "But I appreciate you tryin' to take the fall for me."

Sadie turned around to find her kid brother, Ponyboy, in the doorway. He was hand in hand with Carrie Shepard, whom he finally asked out on a proper date as their first year at TU drew to a close. They'd been steadies for some time already (and, really, had been since Ponyboy was about fourteen or fifteen), and Carrie now spent more time at the Curtis house than she already did. She was another change that Sadie wasn't sure how well she could abide. It wasn't that she wasn't happy for Pony and Carrie. They'd spent years trying to get it right. It was that everyone seemed to make themselves at home in Sadie's home, which wasn't her home anymore. She didn't recognize anything there. It wasn't clear who said you couldn't go home again, but whoever it was, they were righter than rain. Sadie was lost in hallways and bedrooms she had memorized.

"Hey, Pony," Sadie said. "Let me ask you a question. Do you think our brother Darry should let Lucy's parents buy his wedding cake?"

"Free cake?" Ponyboy asked. "I'll sign him up myself if I have to."

"Well, you don't have to. He's already agreed to the handout."

"You can't think of it as a handout, Sadie," Lucy said.

"Yeah," Dally backed up his wife. "Think of it as a gift."

"What's the difference?"

"One sounds polite, and the other sounds …"

"Suspicious," Lucy offered. "But my parents aren't suspicious. OK, my mom is a little weird, but that's only because she raised me in the decade before Friedan. But that's not the same as being evil."

"Nobody said anything about evil," Sadie said.

"It's interesting, you know," Carrie piped up, still hand in hand with Ponyboy. "I've been reading a lot about evil for my Christian philosophy final next week, and Augustine says that evil is the absence of anything, so nothing is evil."

"I don't know if I get that," Jane said.

"What do you mean?" Carrie asked.

"I don't know. I thought it was pretty fuckin' evil when Tim took out that Brumly boy's eye last year after findin' out for sure he was the one who knocked up your sister. And that felt a little like something."

Carrie looked down at her shoes and turned an awful shade of scarlet. That was another thing that had changed within the neighborhood from 1969 to 1970. Tim Shepard had finally landed himself in prison. For years, he'd been able to evade the law the best he could, but now, even Tim Shepard was doing time because of time. As a teenager, he'd been in and out of reform schools, just like Dally had been before he married Lucy. But in all the years since his adolescence, he'd managed to avoid real time in the real clink. He was just too smart to let anybody catch him. And then, one day, after months of speculating that she was visiting the old neighborhood on a semi-frequent basis, Tim found Angela sitting in a booth at Jay's. Katie Mathews, Two-Bit's kid sister, had been waiting on her table and finally recognized her for certain. The two of them talked about where Angela had been and why she'd run off. To Tim's surprise (and Carrie's, when she heard about it), Angela was telling him the complete truth. Carrie supposed she was tired of feeling alone … tired of keeping all her thoughts to herself. Even Angela Shepard had a breaking point. When Tim gouged that kid's eye out, and he told the whole story, most people had been horrified by it. Carrie was embarrassed that her brother, whom she loved even on his most difficult and most violent days, could have done a thing like this. Most people felt sick when they thought of Tim Shepard blinding a guy because he knocked up and deserted his kid sister.

Darry Curtis never would have said so out loud, but he understood it completely.

"I don't know how in the world we got from wedding cake to Carrie's family," Lucy said. "But can we just call it a day? Can we stop obsessing over this cake? My parents are going to buy it. That's where the story begins, and incidentally, it's also where it ends."

"Parallelism!" Ponyboy said and pointed his index finger at Lucy in some sort of epiphany.

"You must be reading something by Dickens right now," Lucy said.

"Dombey and Son."

"Ole Jack Bennet's favorite. He's nontraditional that way."

"Is there a way to be nontraditional about Charles Dickens?" Jane asked.

"There is, but you wouldn't get it," Sadie said.

"Why wouldn't I get it?"

Sadie made no reply. She didn't want Michael to feed off her bitterness even more than he already had. It wasn't that she wanted to call Jane stupid. Jane wasn't stupid. It was that Sadie was (again, and against her better judgment, which seemed to have defenestrated itself long ago) terribly angry with her oldest friend. For as long as Sadie would look at herself in the mirror and remind herself that Jane hadn't actually supplanted her in her own family, it was still difficult. After all, where Sadie had given up the right to call herself Curtis, Jane had signed the very papers that gave her the right to bear that name.

Sadie wondered what Frances Curtis would think of either of them now.

As Sadie tried to explain Victorian literature to Jane (a hopeless case, perhaps, as Jane didn't like to read much that wasn't a fashion or a fan magazine), Lucy took a step back and tried to gauge what was really going on in the Curtis house that day. She and Dally had arrived to talk to Darry and Lynnie about their wedding (specifically the cake), but now, Darry was agreeing to Jack and Esther's gift. Lynnie, meanwhile, was nowhere to be seen, off tending to Jimmy in his new bedroom as though that was where they belonged – sequestered from everyone else who'd been there since what felt like the beginning. Now, Sadie was in the mix, and she was angry. Even if she didn't want to admit it, she was angry, and she couldn't hide her rage (or jealousy – she was so good at synthesizing them) from her best friend. Lucy would have suggested they go outside to talk about it and give everyone else in the room a chance to breathe and regroup, but she didn't. She didn't have time. The moment Lucy moved to touch Sadie's arm and pull her aside, the front door to the old Curtis house swung open one more time.

He had been back for nearly one year to the day. Everyone in the gang had seen him nearly everyday since then. He looked so much the same as when he was nineteen years old and left for his beginning of his tour, and yet, each time they saw him, he looked that much different. He was the same height, and his hair was getting long again. Jane said she remembered the morning he woke up ecstatic because he realized it was long and thick enough to put grease in it again (but ultimately decided not to, as grease was relatively out, even for greasers). When he left them and the old neighborhood in the middle of 1968, he walked upright. When he came back to them in the middle of 1969, he walked with a limp. Though the rest of the gang pretended they no longer noticed Soda's limp, they couldn't help it. They saw it every time.

On April 6, 1969, right around the moment Michael Cade was born to Sadie and Johnny, Sodapop Curtis was shot in the leg. He fell to the ground and broke the rest of his leg on the way down there. He lost a lot of blood on soil that was not his own. According to the reports, Soda could have been trampled to death if another man hadn't pulled him up from under his armpits and dragged him back to something that looked more like safety. When they brought him back home, they let him carry the bullet they'd extracted from his leg. And for a little while, he liked to pull it out and brag about how he'd survived, almost like he knew that was the moment he became an uncle. He couldn't let himself die before he had the chance to meet Sadie's new baby. But after the first couple of months after his return, he talked about his amazing brush with death less and less frequently. It seemed like he shut that part of himself off – the part that told him to be a man proud of his victories. The longer Soda stayed inside the old Curtis house, regardless of the long hours he worked or his marriage to Jane Randle (Curtis), the more he seemed … odd. He was a version of Sodapop Curtis that everyone else figured he had left behind in childhood. Everyone was too afraid to be afraid.

When Soda walked into the Curtis house that evening, he was overwhelmed by how many people were standing around the living room. It felt like a theater, and he was its reluctant star. There had been more people in the tiny house before. Soda wasn't stupid, no matter how many years he spent trying to convince himself and everyone around him that he had to be. He understood that. But since his return from Vietnam, he couldn't help but feel like everyone was watching him. They were watching him to see if he would ever have a violent and nearly unforgivable outburst like Steve had when he put his hands around Evie's throat … waiting to see if he'd seek solace in more bottles than usual, like Two-Bit. When he'd called Darry and told him that he and Steve were going for a beer after work that day, he heard the pause in his brother's voice – the panic. Everyone was waiting for prewar Soda to become postwar Soda. The anticipation was so palpable that they were missing the obvious. Postwar Soda had been onstage since the minute he arrived back into the fold. He was well into his second act. And no one noticed because they couldn't find what they wanted to see. Veterans were supposed to come back with something big and traumatic. Soda came back different. There was no other way to describe it but different. And no one noticed.

Well, almost no one.

Sadie turned back around to face her twin in the doorway. She was overcome. A part of her wanted to make a break for it and pretend like she'd gone blind – like she never saw him. A part of her wanted to run at him and sweep him up into the biggest hug she'd ever given him. It had been too long since the twins had shown each other affection like that. But most of her just wanted to fall through the floor, Michael in her arms, and disappear. It was much easier than dealing with the reality of things. It was much easier than dealing with the familiar stranger in her eye line … a gaze upon her that looked so much like her own and yet felt so foreign … so evaluative and almost cold.

Eventually (and at the same time), the twins looked each other in the eye and cracked the tiniest, most unsure smiles of their lives. They waved at each other as though they were gazing into their own reflections. In that moment, it was like the rest of the room (and the rest of the world) had no choice but to melt away. There was nothing to do but start. There was nothing to do but speak.

"Hey," Soda said.

"Hi," said Sadie.

Two-Bit Mathews rolled up in front of a house on the border of the grease homes and the Soc homes. It was the same border where Lucy Bennet used to live before she lost her mind and married ole Dally on a dare. As he parked the car and waited for the person inside the house to come out and meet him, he fixed his hair in the rearview mirror. Grease may have been out for a lot of guys in the old neighborhood, but he was quite sure he'd never give it up. It was too good of a look.

To everyone's surprise (especially his kid sister Katie's), the car had been earned honestly. After the manager of the concession stand at the Dingo caught Two-Bit sleeping off a hangover underneath the front row of seats, he cut him a deal: If Two-Bit got a job manning the popcorn, drinks, and candy on the busiest nights of every week, then the manager wouldn't report him to the police. It paid a decent wage, but it sure as hell wasn't enough. He made up the rest of his money as a custodian down at the high school he'd (finally) graduated from. Similarly to the situation at the Dingo, the older custodian had found Two-Bit sleeping off a different hangover underneath the bleachers. So, the older custodian cut him a deal: If Two-Bit asked the school principal for a job as the assistant (and night) custodian at the high school, then the other man wouldn't report him to the police. It paid a decent wage, and coupled with the cash he was earning down at the Dingo, he had enough after almost two years to pay for his own car. Katie and his mother about died of shock when they heard that one. It was another one of those things that was changing too rapidly for anyone's taste. Two-Bit Mathews was acting responsibly (or at least with the illusion of responsibility). It was that performance of responsibility that landed him there, in front of a middle-class house between the greasers and the Socs.

His eyes lit up when he saw her come down from the porch and get into the car. She was Laura Lubbock, but really, she was something else. Two-Bit had met Laura when he went to visit Lucy and Dally down at Great Books in the summer of 1969. Since Two-Bit had finally asked Dally why he bothered to take the fall for him in 1965, and Two-Bit busted the school windows, he and Dally had been trying to fix things between the two of them. To his complete and utter surprise, Two-Bit spent most of that summer going in and out of a bookstore, trying to see if Dally had really forgiven him for being such a piece of garbage when they were just kids. But one day, when he came to bother the hell out Dally once again, he saw Lucy hanging over the counter, talking about some big thick book with one of the prettiest women he'd ever seen.

Lucy introduced the other girl as Laura Lubbock. As it happened, Lucy and Laura were both English majors at TU, and they were taking the same summer course to stay on track with their anticipated graduation date (which, by no small feat, they'd both achieved). Laura was there to go over possible essay topics with Lucy, but she never expected to run into a guy as funny and handsome as Two-Bit Mathews. Two-Bit felt almost the same way about Laura as he got to know her that first day. He'd been immediately captivated by her long blonde hair and the way she wore bright colors like no one was watching, but when she spoke, he thought he might have fallen immediately in love. Boy, did Laura Lubbock know how to turn a phrase and make a joke. She was an English major, she said, and they were very good at things like that. Two-Bit could almost feel himself begin to swoon – him! It was only about an hour or two before he asked her for a date, and she accepted. Two-Bit was pretty close to thrilled – as close as a cool guy like himself could get, of course. Laura Lubbock was beautiful and clever, and after Two-Bit had been repeatedly rejected by Lilly Cade, the woman he was so sure he really loved, this date with a different woman was exactly what he thought he needed.

One date turned into two, and two dates turned into three. Before either Two-Bit or Laura recognized it, they were in a full-on, committed relationship. Two-Bit had met Laura's folks, and they even seemed to like him. They didn't care that he wasn't a college student as long as he was kind and loved their daughter. And Two-Bit did love their daughter. It happened when he wasn't even paying attention to it.

That evening, she got into the car like always and kissed his cheek.

"Hi," she said. Her voice was one of the sweetest Two-Bit had ever heard.

"Hey," he said. "How ya doin', baby?"

"Not too bad. Daddy doesn't like it when you pull up to the curb but don't come into the house, you know. He thinks it's impolite."

"Well, he don't have a movie to catch in ten minutes when he's runnin' five behind."

"Maybe not, but he still complained."

"Ah, tell him to get over it. We been together a long time now. He knows how much I love you."

Laura blushed. It had been nearly a year since Two-Bit told her he loved her for the first time (beneath her favorite tree in her own backyard), but each time still felt so novel. She couldn't believe she'd fallen in love with one of those raucous boys from a few streets East. She couldn't believe it was forever.

"Believe it or not, it's not even that he wants you to be a gentleman for me," Laura said. "He truly wishes you'd come in there and talk to him. He adores you. I always try to tell him that he's not the one dating you, but it's like he won't listen."

Two-Bit chuckled.

"Well, tell your old man I'm flattered, but I swing in a very different way. A way he probably don't wanna think about, given who I'm doin' the swingin' with."

He frowned, suddenly aware of his diction.

"I didn't mean swingin' like the way they're sayin' it these days," he said. "Y'know I don't play that way."

Laura leaned over and kissed Two-Bit's cheek despite the fact that he was driving. Sometimes he was so sweet and cute that she couldn't resist. Now, it was his turn to blush, even though Laura had kissed him like that hundreds of times before.

"You're sweet," she said. "Hey, Daddy says the two of you were hanging out some time last week. I didn't know about that."

Two-Bit's blood pressure spiked.

"Yeah?" he asked, his voice shaking just a little bit.

"What was that about?"

But Two-Bit didn't give an answer. Laura was a smart girl, and she was only asking him to pester him … to badger out of him an answer she'd already stumbled upon for herself. Two-Bit, of course, wouldn't give her the satisfaction right away. He wanted there to be some element of surprise.

"You know," he finally said. "Guy stuff."

Laura smirked.

"Guy stuff," she repeated. "Right."

Of course, there was a certain truth lingering over the both of them, and only Two-Bit knew the resolution. In two weeks, Darry Curtis and Lynnie Jones would be married. On the day after their wedding, so as not to steal the thunder away from the big man who'd done so much to help Two-Bit feel like he had a place in the world since they were just young kids, Two-Bit would get down on one knee and ask Laura Lubbock to marry him.

The thought was more exciting than perhaps any he'd ever had. For years, he thought he'd never be the kind of guy who could fall in love with a woman who loved him right back, but then, all of a sudden, she appeared. He couldn't just let her go. He'd have to do it somewhere private, of course. Laura was special and dear to him, and he didn't want just anyone to see.

Lilly Cade hovered above the bathroom sink and wondered if this was a new rule.

In 1966, it had been Lucy in the hospital after twisting her ankle. Two years later, in 1968, it had been Sadie, going to the doctor after a week and a half of vomiting. And now, two years after that, in 1970, Lilly was dealing (poorly) with the results of her own doctor's appointment. She could hardly believe it. She was freshly twenty years old, unmarried, and pregnant.

Then again, she was Lilly Cade. What more could she really have expected?

She supposed she was expecting quite a bit.

In a manner of speaking, Lilly wasn't surprised by what the doctor told her that morning. She'd had to take a couple of buses outside of town to access one of those free clinics to figure it out, but on her way there, she was aware. Much like when Lucy and Dally had Elenore, Lilly's pregnancy was one of those on-purpose accidents. Except it wasn't like when Lucy and Dally had Elenore at all because Lucy and Dally were married. They had a relationship, and even before Dally knew he wanted that baby, he wanted that baby. That wasn't where Lilly was.

After Two-Bit started going steady (and then super steady) with Laura Lubbock, Lilly felt her heart break like it never had. All of a sudden, she was fifteen years old again, waking up in the Mathewses' house to find she was alone except for Katie and her judgmental gaze. It was raw to see the man she'd always loved with some other woman – some other (blonde) woman they never even knew before. At least when it was Kathy Whoever, it made sense. She lived in the neighborhood, and a few guys had tried her out before she almost sort of settled on Two-Bit. Lilly could handle it when it was one of their own. But Laura Lubbock existed in some other space. She wasn't poor, but she wasn't rich, either. She had a college education. Like Lucy, she'd be graduating from TU the very next day. She was smart and funny and she was white (all white, anyway). As far as Lilly could see, Laura Lubbock was everything Lilly Cade was not.

It wasn't like Lilly could tell anyone how she felt about Two-Bit choosing Laura Lubbock over her. Not after all the times Two-Bit had come to her with regret, telling her he loved her and wanted to be with her, regardless of the bullshit he'd put down before. She'd turned him down. She hadn't gone after him even after he played "Just Once in My Life" at Jay's that afternoon in 1969. Of course, she hadn't been sure it was him (but it was). Either way you looked at it, Lilly had turned Two-Bit down when he wanted her. It was within his right – expected – for him to seek out someone else.

But did it have to be Laura Lubbock? Did it have to be someone who was so white?

The white thing was part of what landed Lilly in that situation. Since she was about eighteen years old, Lilly sought out white boys to take to bed with her. She knew it was probably a problem, but she did it, anyway. It made her feel like she was taking back some of the power she gave away to the little sons of bitches in grammar school who made her feel less than beautiful because of her skin and because of her eyes. It made her feel like she had a shot at being the model on a magazine cover. When Lilly landed herself another white boy, it made her feel (She knew how her friends would feel if they knew she saw herself this way.) worthwhile. Lilly wasn't clueless. She knew the way the world worked, and she knew that white boys grew into the white men who governed everything. But when she took them to their most vulnerable spots, she felt like she belonged somewhere, even if it was only temporary. She felt like she was good enough to sit on the main floor of the movie theater. Part of her wished she didn't feel that way, but she couldn't help it. It was what everyone had told her to think, more or less.

And one day, without really recognizing it, Lilly decided that she wanted to be a mother to a white child. Lilly was already half white to begin with. Maybe if she had a baby with a white boy, her baby would get to experience life as part of the many – as part of the privileged. She saw how excited Johnny was when his son, Michael, was born with Sadie's (Anglican) eyes. She wanted to give that kind of reward to her own child. She wanted to live for something. A baby, she figured (even in her unconscious) was something to live for.

That was what Soda's high school girlfriend had done. That was what Angela Shepard had done, too. It seemed only logical that Lilly Cade would be the next follow down the pattern.

She looked at herself one more time in the mirror. She'd seen two of her friends become mothers before. She'd seen how it changed them – how it took parts of their personalities and turned the volume up on them. Lucy had always been protective, but now that she had Elenore, she was even stronger. Sadie had always been sensitive, but now that she had Michael, she was kinder than ever. Lilly wondered if something like that would happen to her when she had her own child. She wondered if there was anything great about her to come forward like that.

Just for a moment, when she looked at herself in the mirror, Lilly Cade saw herself and thought she was beautiful.

But then, of course, she had to purge.

Katie Mathews punched out of her shift at Jay's. She wondered what was taking Lilly so long in the bathroom, but she couldn't stick around and tend to Lilly's tables for much longer. She was already working overtime, and her manager didn't want to have to pay her even more. In a way, Katie was glad to get the boot for the night. Her feet were killing her, and she wanted to go home and see Two-Bit. He was planning to propose to his girl. Now that Lilly seemed to be well over him, Katie didn't feel quite as guilty about her excitement for her brother and Laura Lubbock. She looked forward to having Laura in their little mess of a family.

Things between Katie and Two-Bit had been going surprisingly well since the beginning of 1969. At least, it was a surprise for Katie. In the previous January, Katie told Jane (whom she would always love, in some fashion or another) that she was a lesbian. Jane had been gregarious about it – hadn't automatically assumed that just because Katie liked other women meant that she'd been in love with her all her life. Of course, Katie had been in love with Jane all her life, but she wasn't going to admit that to her face. Since Jane had been so loving toward Katie (who would always feel markedly different, even though everyone said she wasn't different, just not straight – still felt like a ton of crap because none of Katie's friends knew what it was like to be anything other than straight), Katie finally found the guts to come out to Two-Bit in May of 1969.

His reaction was calm – almost like Katie hadn't said anything new to him at all. When she told him she was a lesbian, and that meant she was a woman who loved other women, all Two-Bit did was nod. She furrowed her brow, waiting for some rote speech about how he hadn't been expecting it, but it was OK. She was waiting for him to tell her that dreaded inevitability – that he accepted her (as though she needed someone else's permission). But he didn't. He just nodded. When she asked him if he had anything to say – any questions, even – he finally just shook his head.

"Naw," he'd said. "I love you, if that's what you wanna hear."

That was all it was. No "I still love you." No "I'd love you even if you were a turtle person" or some adjacent garbage Katie would eventually hear from other people throughout her lifetime. Just "I love you." And she did need to hear it. They didn't exchange it often enough.

Katie decided to take the bus home that day. Normally, she would walk, but she was too tired to take another step. When she got on, she wasn't paying attention to where she was going. But as soon as she took her seat, she heard a voice she'd never forgotten but never expected to hear again.

"Why, Miss Mathews!" the voice called out to her. "You're beautiful."

Katie jumped and looked around to where that voice was coming from. Sure enough, it wasn't a dream. She was really there – still wearing trousers, though her hair was longer now. Katie couldn't even smile. She was too shocked. After what seemed like eons, she could finally eke out one word.

"Blossom?"

Even though he knew it was wrong, Steve Randle took off in the same direction again that night.

Really, when it came down to it, he could just as easily blame Soda. When the two of them had gone out for a beer after work that day, Soda had said something about living each day like it was your last. It was cliché, and Steve knew that. But just because it was cliché didn't make it any less valuable.

He was getting older, but he was still young. Unlike so many of his friends, he wasn't tethered to anything – not to a job, not to a place, and not to a woman. He was still seeing Evie, but they hadn't talked about getting married since they were in high school. Evie seemed content to hang around with Steve in limbo (a holding pattern, maybe). She never pushed. Maybe it was because she was working and taking a few classes at the community college after all these years since graduation. Maybe it was because it was already 1970, and a women's revolution was well underway. Maybe it was because Evie didn't want to be married to a Vietnam vet who woke up in the middle of the night only to treat her like an enemy soldier. Either way, they weren't talking about making anything legal—not anymore.

And besides, Steve thought. Perhaps he did love Evie. He knew he did, in his way. She loved him in her own, too. But he was young and stupid and filled to the brim with trauma he'd spend the rest of his life trying (and failing – miserably failing) to reconcile. He didn't need to burden Evie with that. She was better than bullshit. She was better than violence.

Maybe, for a few hours every now and then, Steve would do well to visit someone who could take a few of the punches.

So, he did.

Everyone thought Lucy and Dally were moving to New York City on August 1, but they weren't. They were moving on May 16 – a day after Darry and Lynnie's wedding.

In fairness, that wasn't what they had initially planned. They were going to stay the entire summer and get their affairs in Tulsa together – spend time with the people they loved most in the world (in addition to, of course, their three-year-old daughter). But when the department called and told Lucy that they would need to begin training her for an assistantship on May 18, Lucy had no choice but to spring into action. They would leave the morning after the reception.

Their apartment above Great Books was a disaster. It existed in that very in-between space – between living in and moving out. Dally knew they ought to start packing more, but Lucy resisted. For as much as she'd wanted to leave Tulsa and explore the rest of the country (and the world), there was the smallest part of her that wished they could stay. After all, Lucy's parents lived in Tulsa. Dally's only sister, Violet, lived in Tulsa.

Sadie and Soda lived in Tulsa.

"If you ain't gonna pack anything up tonight, can you at least tell me why we ain't tellin' nobody about when we're goin'?" Dally asked. He was helping Elenore get changed into her pajamas.

"I don't want these ones," Elenore said.

"Well, which ones do ya want?" Dally asked.

"Purple."

"Purple's in the wash. Take it up with your ma."

"Ma?" Elenore asked. "Where's purple?"

"Purple's in the wash," Lucy said. "Take it up with your dad. He's an able-bodied human man, and he's more than capable of doing the wash himself."

Dally rolled his eyes and helped Elenore into her pink nightgown – a gift from Aunt Jane (one she'd purchased with her own money, too).

"I'll get ya the purple in no time," Dally said. "But you're gonna be OK with the pink?"

Elenore nodded.

"There ya go. Go to sleep, OK?"

"OK, Dad."

"Goodnight, Elenore," Lucy said. "Mommy loves you."

"Love you, Mommy!"

And Elenore was off to bed. She did not tell her father she loved him. After all the time they'd spent together when she was turning two (and despite the fact that Elenore didn't exactly remember that time in her life), she knew she didn't need to tell him. Dally already knew.

Dally turned to Lucy to ask her again about why they were keeping their moving date such a secret at such a pivotal time. She exhaled, exhausted.

"Look, I know I'm fucking up, OK?" Lucy asked. "I'm always fucking up."

"Yeah, you kinda are," Dally agreed. "This ain't what I had in mind when I agreed to have a wife and whatnot."

Lucy rolled her eyes, and Dally smirked. They understood better now.

"But I just can't ruin the wedding like this," Lucy said. "I can't make it all about us. I mean, Lynnie is finally happy again. And Darry is finding his own life. And Sadie … you know how much I hate to see Sadie disappointed."

"Yeah, I do. But you ain't seein' the whole picture, man."

"What am I missing?"

"If you don't tell Sadie we're leavin' right after the wedding, you're gonna disappoint her more 'cause ya didn't tell the truth."

Lucy sighed. She knew Dally was right. That didn't make it any easier.

"Can we just not think about this at this very moment?" she asked. "Can we focus on tomorrow? When I graduate?"

"You focus on tomorrow," Dally said. "I'll pack for two weeks from now."

Lucy nodded. In a life where almost nothing ever was, Dally's agreement seemed fair.

And we're off to a ridiculously long start. Tell me, though – did you really expect much else?

This story takes place within the fourteen days before Darry's wedding. Each chapter will narrate the events of a different day. I wanted to challenge myself to write on a very small scale, especially after 'See My Friends,' which tells its tale over the course of one full year.

Hinton owns The Outsiders. Lucy quotes a passage from Jacques Lacan's 1957 essay, "The Agency of the Letter in the Unconscious, or Reason Since Freud." You can imagine that's an essay I like quite a bit. I obviously claim no ownership of either text, though I do own copies of both.