Author's Note: Welcome back, y'all! This is that sister fic I mentioned a while back – some of you probably already know Sadie Mathews, but even if you don't…this is her story. Not her brother's or Ponyboy's or anybody else's. So you don't need to have read any of my other stories for this one to make sense – it incorporates the universe in a standalone way. I hope you guys enjoy getting to know her. :D

Happy reading :)

XXXXX

It's not stopped raining for a week. Noah – we may need you to build another ark.

I should be packing, but instead I'm drawn to the front window, leaning over the couch and staring at the street, waiting for my brother to pull up. He'd run out in a real hurry after he'd hung up the phone, saying there was some sort of emergency, and I could guess who it had to do with. We were all waiting for things to get better, for all of us, and my mother had decided she'd try to force them into getting better by moving us. Moving was sure a hassle; you never know how much stuff you actually have until you have to put it in boxes. Keith was helping me pack up my room when the phone rang, and I guessed he was over at Mr. Randle's right now. The only emergencies these days usually had to do with his son, one of my brother's best friends, Steve. He'd come back from Vietnam and had been alright for a while, but the way Keith had explained it to me, he'd just been hiding the hurt.

"Just cuz Steve didn't come back hurt don't mean he didn't come back hurt," was what he had said, and I knew he meant that maybe Steve hadn't been wounded, like he himself had been, but he'd been traumatized. How could he not be? The stuff they showed on TV and in the papers was bad enough. I couldn't imagine living it.

"Sadie. You can pack without your brother. I imagine you will get done faster without him, actually."

I turned my head and saw my mother coming out of the kitchen and putting another box of kitchenware on the table. If you could say one thing about my mother, it was that she was scarily efficient – but you can say a lot of things about my mother, and in my mind, all of them good. Or, nearly all of them. I figured my mother was just about the best mom on the whole entire planet, and there really wasn't any competition. She was even better than all the TV moms. Carol Brady who? I have to say, though, that I don't always love the nagging.

"I'm just taking a break," I said, probably sounding whiny. "What do you think is taking so long this time?" I asked more quietly, and I heard Mom sigh.

"I don't know. It will take as long as it takes. We just need to pray everything will be alright."

We did a lot of praying these days. Keith, I don't think he ever prayed, but he was coming to church with us more often now that he was back. Mom and I, though, we prayed about the war and we prayed about Steve and Sodapop and Keith, and I sometimes prayed that Richard Nixon would lose reelection because he seemed too angry to be president to me. I also sometimes prayed for The Beatles to get back together, but that seemed like an even bigger longshot. I've prayed nearly every night before bed for as long as I can remember, Mom usually right by my side, rosary in hand, and when Keith was in Vietnam, we'd sometimes pray for over an hour, asking God to please let him come home okay, and not in a coffin. I don't know what I'd do without my brother, and when we got the news about him getting hurt, I cried for hours, flinging myself on my bed and just wailing, and I was angry. I was angry at God, figuring it was His fault this had happened, and that He had killed my brother, that he was going to die.

My brother didn't die, which I was grateful for, of course, but he did come back just a little different. He hadn't been quite the same as he was, and he still wasn't, and he'd been back for roughly a year and a half now. I figured I'd feel different if I'd been shot in the jungle, too. How could he not be different? At least he wasn't doing drugs, like Steve was. I just wanted him to go back to being my brother, though, the way he was before, even if he was sort of annoying.

After watching for a little while longer, I gave up on Keith getting home any time soon and went back to my room to continue packing. We'd just started working on boxing up my books when the phone rang, so that's what I went back to. Where the Red Fern Grows; Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret; Anne of Green Gables…on and on. Another one of Keith's friends, Ponyboy Curtis, had given me a lot of his old books when he'd left for college, and he had a pretty big collection. Of course, I already had quite a few of my own, but my bookshelf was even fuller after he'd given them to me. Pony was nice like that – I got along with him pretty well, too. It was a benefit of having a brother that was a lot older than you that you got to know how to talk to older people. Maybe that's why I have only a few close friends my own age; I just like talking to older people better.

Finally, there was a knock on my door, and Keith was home. I smiled at him, and he smiled back. "Hey, girly-girl. Need a hand?"

"Yes," I said emphatically. "I got all the books put away, but there's still almost all my clothes. Mom said we obviously don't need to worry about the furniture until tomorrow."

"Obviously," he repeated, opening up my closet. I bit my lip, not wanting to avoid the elephant in the room for any longer than we already had, which had been maybe thirty seconds. I could be impatient like that.

"Keith?"

"Yeah."

"Is…is Steve okay?"

Keith took a deep breath, and nodded once. "Yeah, he'll be fine," he sighed. "He'll be fine."

I never got any real details. I knew about the drugs, but I didn't know what these emergencies looked like, the situations that made for these urgent calls, or how many of them were even directly drug-related. Keith hadn't even wanted to tell me in the first place about all of this, but if I work on him long enough on something, he usually gives in. I know it's not a good thing that I do that, but I am fourteen now, and I don't care how much older he and his friends are than me – at some point, he's got to stop treating me like the little kid I used to be. I deserve to know what's going on.

Keith's always sort of quiet when he comes back from helping out, too. It's kind of nice this afternoon, with the rain pitter-pattering away on my bedroom window and the radio playing softly in the background, but it's also a bit of a red flag; my brother only gets like this when he's thoughtful, or sad, and instead of ever just talking about it, he just thinks about it, and then moves on like nothing ever happened. He's got to be one of the most frustrating people on the planet, I swear. He's always been this way, it's just that he's been like this more and more the past year and a half, and more and more since Steve got back and started getting bad.

"School starts up next week, don't it?"

I nodded. "Yep," I popped the 'p.'

"Freshman year," he sang, and he caught my eye and we both grinned. "Whaddya make of that, kid?"

I thought about it for a moment. "I'm excited," I decided. "Weren't you?"

He made a face. My brother and school had an interesting relationship, to say the least. He hadn't wanted to go to college; he was good enough at baseball that he was playing minor league before he got drafted, but his insides got so torn up by that bullet and he got so sick over there that he just isn't healthy enough anymore, and by the time he is, it'll have been so long since he played that there's almost no point. Now Keith was aimless, as aimless as he was back in high school before he –

Well. He was a lot of things before. And now he's someone else.

"I don't quite remember," he mused. "It was ten years ago. Ain't that somethin'? When I was in the position you are now, you were four. That's kinda wild, ain't it?"

I laughed. "Guess so. But you had to be a little excited. Right? High school is supposed to be exciting and…different."

Keith looked at me funny when I said that, and then he set the dresses in his arms over the flap of a box and came to sit next to me on the floor, where I was sat by my bookshelf, and we both leaned up against the bed. "Sadie. Girly-girl. I want you to know somethin'."

"Okay," I shrugged, but I already knew what he was going to say.

"High school is real different," he agreed. "But…sometimes it takes a while for things to change. Some days, feels like you're stuck in the same damn rut you've been in yer whole life, and somethin' comes along and changes that. But that's life, kiddo. And you're gonna be one'a the best kids they got, and don't let anybody tell ya any different. Okay?"

"Okay," I mumbled. "Keith?"

"Yeah."

"Is it…d'you think I should have more friends than I do?"

Keith cocked an eyebrow – he was always doing that. It was one of the things that definitely hadn't changed about him. "No, not if you're happy with the ones ya got. Be with the people who make ya happy, kid. The people who like you for who you are. You do that, then you'll be alright. 'Sides, you're, like, the nicest kid I know. You'll be the most popular girl at Will Rogers in no time," he grinned, and bumped my shoulder.

"You were real popular in high school, weren't you?" I asked, and Keith rolled his eyes.

"Oh, I don't know," he grumbled. "Well-known, maybe."

"I've looked through all your yearbooks and you got tons of signatures."

"Well, so do you."

"You're not getting me," I sighed. "I just…it's so big, and what if I just…disappear?"

Keith stared at me. "Sadie. Relax. It's just high school," he said easily. "You'll figure it out. And you'll be fine. Just like Steve. Everything's gonna work out a-okay for everybody."

I believed him. It was hard not to, when he smiled so easily and spoke in that gentle tone of voice. Everything about my brother was reassuring. He was one of the most important people in my life, and I had decided a long time ago that he was generally a good person to listen to, no matter how crazy he could get. Keith may be a total goof, but he understands things better than just about anybody. So when he talks – which is often – I listen.

xXx

Mom's had the itch to move out of this neighborhood for years. I can't blame her – we don't exactly live in the nice part of town. My whole life, Keith and I have been hearing her grumble about how we need to get out of here, but it's never really been able to happen until now. Keith's living on his own now, and he had sent his military pay our way, and a couple years ago, Mom revealed to me that she'd actually gone to secretary school before she got pregnant with my brother, and could type out eighty-something words a minute or more on a typewriter. It's just that when our father moved her down to Oklahoma, she hadn't been able to find any work, especially in her condition, and our father hadn't wanted her working anyways. But now, she'd found some secretarial work at the University of Tulsa, and she liked that a heck of a lot more than being a barmaid, and it paid better, too. I guess now just felt like the right time to her, and it's not like we were moving that far anyways. Ten minutes away to a neighborhood that was a bit more quiet, a house that was about as old but in better condition. Our house was fine, but the exterior was starting to go.

It helped that Keith had his own apartment now. It was really just me and Mom these days, and Keith was sort of a mess. So. You can do with that information what you'd like.

I was looking forward to moving; I was as ready for a change as Mom was, and none of my friends lived in this neighborhood, anyways. Keith seemed to be having a bit of a hard time wrapping his head around the idea, which I didn't get because he remembered the last time we moved when I was just a baby, and it didn't seem like it bothered him none – it wasn't like he missed the old place. I hadn't even seen our old house before, and I didn't care to. It was out on one of the old state roads, and no one had lived there since us. Keith said the place was in rough shape and probably dangerous, and that it wasn't a good idea for me to go poking around, so I didn't, and I didn't want to. Fine by me. I knew that house was the last place any of us saw my father, and I knew that Mom and Keith probably had memories associated with it that they didn't want to dig up, and even if I didn't have the memories, I had thoughts about my father and what he did to us, and I didn't want to think about them any more than I already did. That's probably why Keith never cared about moving out of that house – believe it or not, moving into this house was a step up for us at the time, and there were a lot of bad memories there, and a lot of good memories here.

I bet you that's what's got my brother so bent out of shape. This neighborhood is where he grew up with Steve Randle and the Curtis brothers, and a boy named Johnny Cade who died along with Dallas Winston about five years ago now. Hardly anybody talked about either of them anymore, not even Keith and his friends, but I still remember them. Dallas had hardly ever come around our house, probably because he knew how wary my mother was of him, but he crashed here a few times. I knew Johnny much better, and not just because of how often he spent the night here. He was nicer, if quieter, sadder. I invited him to see me in a church play once, but that was the same day he got badly beaten by some boys, and he didn't come. But he always watched cartoons with me in the morning, and anyone who does that is alright in my book – Keith was usually too hungover on Saturdays to bother.

"Ooh," Keith cooed. "I love this song." He leaned over and turned up the radio sitting on the windowsill, Bob Dylan's "Went to See the Gypsy" playing alongside the continuing rain. It had let up a little, though, and we had the kitchen window open to let in the late summer night air, damp from the rain, which had that wonderful rainy smell that I just loved. It was really only sprinkling now, the raindrops dancing on the ledge of the window. It wasn't that late yet, early evening, but with the clouds it looked dark.

This was our last night in this house.

It really struck me then that this was the last night I would ever spend in this house, in the room I had slept in for fourteen years. I would never bound up that exact staircase ever again, or listen to records in what used to be my brother's room, or make dinner or bake in this kitchen with my mother ever again. I focused real hard on drying dishes to keep from crying because even though I hadn't been sad about this before, it was really hitting me now.

"I remember freshman year," he went on, oblivious to me, "and I'd tagged along with Darry to this party and sat on the couch in some guy's basement making out with Kathy Lawson while 'Hey Paula' played on the stereo. Kathy loved that stupid song. I swear to God, Bob Dylan got me through high school. No joke! Music saves, I swear."

"Oh, yeah?" I asked, hoping to keep him talking so I didn't have to think.

"Sure does. It's everywhere – at parties, drivin' down the Strip, in diners, hangin' out with yer buddies…pretty sure I had the Top Forty memorized back then. And everything sounds good, too."

"Even Paul and Paula?" I smirked, and he flicked soap suds at me, and I giggled. "You sure are strange."

"So're you," he shot back. "Where d'ya think ya get it from? Mom? Naw, if you're screwy, it's cuz you spent too much time with me."

"I just mean that you gotta lot of weird ideas," I clarified as he passed me another pot to dry off. "Aren't you s'posed to be an adult now or something?"

"Aw, but I'm just a big kid at heart. What, you want me to just go around handin' out business cards and tellin' people to call me Keith? Cuz that ain't my name."

"Yes, it is. It's more your name than Two-Bit is."

"Don't think so. There's a lot in a name, and maybe nobody knows who Keith Mathews is, but they sure as shit know who Two-Bit Mathews is, and that's the way I like it, no matter how old I get."

My mother and I were the only people who called my brother by his real name. Everybody else on the planet called him Two-Bit, the name people had been calling him since he was…gosh, since he was maybe in the fifth grade. Maybe earlier, I don't quite remember. But he was right – that's the name people knew him by, and if you ask me, it said a lot about him. I guess people think my brother's supposed to be funny or something, but that's gotta be some sort of mistake because I'm pretty sure he's the only one who thinks anything he says is funny.

"Who started calling you that?" I asked.

"I swear you've asked this before."

"Well, I'm askin' again, and it ain't like you're doing anything else."

Keith sighed. "It was the fifth grade," he began tiredly. "There was this teacher – who I didn't even have – that was just out to get me, man. I mean, teachers gossip, so she must have heard about me from Mrs. Harris when they were smokin' in the teacher's lounge. The only times the lady ever saw me was in the halls and at recess, and maybe she just didn't like the look of me or somethin', cuz everything I did got on her nerves. Everything! If I even looked at her sideways she was on my ass. Well, this rightfully pissed me off, so I decide for myself that I'm gonna get back at her someday, somehow.

"So, one day, Mrs. Harris has to step out for a bit, and this witch comes over and takes over our class for her while she's gone and her class was at…I don't remember. But they weren't in class. And as I'm sure you remember, dear reader, in the fifth grade, you learn all about early American history – Indians, pilgrims, George Washington, that sort of shit – and so that's the lesson she was coverin'. So we pick up where we left off talking about Valley Forge, and the Teacher from Hell swears up and down that the soldiers were eatin' their horses, and damned if I know to this day if that's true, but I saw in this a comedic window. So I says – and I can confirm this because I've experienced it – that horse meat had to beat whatever rations they were gettin'. Well, this gets laughs, because fifth graders always think it's great when you talk without raisin' yer hand, guess cuz whatever you gotta say is so important that you gotta forego the whole formality, but, ya know, it was a pretty sharp response for an eleven-year-old, and I guess my classmates appreciated comedy.

"Well, the teacher didn't appreciate it so much, and with that one comment, I guess I pushed her over the edge – she was fed. Up. She's all huffy now, got her hands on her hips and she's all red-faced, and she glares at me" – he was picking up steam now, and even threw in a voice impression – "and she goes, 'Mr. Mathews. Best for you to find out now while you still have the chance to reform yourself, but the world does not revolve around you, and does not care to hear your two-bit's worth on every matter.' And then some kid – who was an even bigger smartass than me, believe it or not – yells, 'Yeah, Two-Bit!'" Keith shrugged. "And they all laughed, and it stuck. I thought it was kinda funny, so I went with it. They all started callin' me that, and that kid eventually moved away, so everyone forgot who came up with it, but they knew that's what everybody called me, so…yeah. Darry heard somebody call me that at one of our little league games, and then he started usin' it, and when we met Dally, he told him my name was Two-Bit. And now that's just my name, and I get a kick out of it, so why tell anybody otherwise? Cops, teachers, girls…they don't know who the hell Keith Mathews is, but Two-Bit Mathews?" He clicked his tongue and winked. "They know Two-Bit Mathews means business."

I stared at my brother for a minute, to the point that he was starting to look uncomfortable with how long I had been quiet, and then started shaking my head. "You're an idiot," I told him, and he just started laughing.

xXx

"I think I best be headin' out."

Mom looked out the front window at the street, shaking her head at the rain, which had picked up again, and it was full dark out now, too. "Be careful driving," she warned my brother.

"'Course."

Keith spared me a glance, and Mom looked over her shoulder at me, too, and then they started whispering to each other, and not even in English. Mom's from Italy, and Keith picked it up from her because that's what she mostly spoke when he was little. I know some, too, but not as much as he does, and this is what they do when they don't want me to know what they're talking about, but can't be bothered to leave the room. They were talking really quietly, and I didn't get everything, but I picked up a few things here and there, mostly that they were talking about a he and they were both worried. I'd bet you a hundred bucks it was about Steve, but I didn't say anything.

When they were done, Keith smiled at me. "See ya tomorrow, girly-girl."

"See ya."

"Big day!"

I nodded. "Big day," I repeated, and then he left, running out to the Impala and roaring away, probably not driving as carefully as Mom would have liked.

I sat back and tried to communicate nonverbally to my mother that I was trying to watch Laugh-In and didn't want her coming over to have any special talks with me right now, but mothers tend to ignore those kinds of signals, and she came and sat beside me on the couch. Mom didn't say anything at first, just watched the show with an unreadable expression on her face. I don't think she found Laugh-In all that funny. Keith did, but pretty soon he'd be more interested in Monday Night Football and I won't be able to watch, but that's only if he decides he needs to stop in on a Monday night, which I doubt he will. He's always doing something, and rarely with us.

I decided to beat Mom to the punch. "Mom?" She hummed in acknowledgement, looking over at me with a worried expression on her face, and I hadn't even given her anything to be worried about yet! "Do you think he's okay?"

"Who?"

Steve or Keith. Steve or – "Keith," I said quietly. Because my brother had said that Steve would be okay, so I had to believe him, even if I was pretty sure he was who he'd been talking about with Mom. "Do you think he's…okay?"

Mom sighed and chewed thoughtfully on her lip. "What is making you wonder?" She asked.

I thought about it. "I don't know," I shrugged. "He's just different. I feel like…he's been back long enough that he should be more like how he was. You know? Like…he's still him, but…he's quieter," I sneered. "Which I thought I'd like better than I do, but I don't."

Mom smiled a little. "A year and a half is no time at all for a young man to recover from war. I remember the boys back in Italy. I was young, too, but I remember the ones that had been sent home, wounded like your brother, many of them much worse than he was. They had seen things we cannot imagine, and so has your brother. Time is the only thing that will heal that. Distance. He could be much worse," she added gently. "He could be where his friend is. Be grateful that he isn't."

I was. I was. I was beyond grateful that my brother wasn't shooting up heroin. That's not a sentence I could ever imagine I would ever think to myself, let alone ever say out loud, but it was the truth. "Okay," was all I whispered.

"You're tired. I can tell." She rubbed my shoulder. "Tomorrow is a big day. Your brother will be here early." I nodded. "Are you excited, though?"

I could tell by my mother's voice that she was, but instead of just saying yes, I started crying instead.

xXx

When I was done with my cry, Mom told me to go wash off my face and settle down, just calm down, and then go get ready for bed and lie down. I splashed some cold water on my face and scowled at my splotchy red face in the mirror, then sighed. I don't know what came over me, but I hoped it was over now, and decided to focus on getting ready for bed; brushed my teeth, combed the knots out of my hair, blew my nose, and by the time I was through with all that I was breathing a little easier. Sometimes we get overwhelmed, I guess. Everything just builds and builds inside you, and crying is the release valve.

I went into my bedroom and sat on my bed, looking around. Everything was in boxes, waiting to be loaded into a moving truck. It had never felt less like my room than it did right now, but I guess it wasn't really my room anymore – it was going to become someone else's room. Someone else's room was about to become my room, though, too, and they probably felt how I did, wondering who that next person was going to be. I hoped whoever got my old room didn't trash it.

"Better?" Mom asked softly as she sat down on the edge of my bed and I tucked my legs under the covers.

"Yeah," I whispered, shrugging. "I don't know. I think I'm excited – at least, that's what I've thought until now."

"Coming face to face with change is scary," she said, speaking in the absolute like it was nothing, like I probably should have known it already, and maybe I should have – my life has seen a lot of change in a short time. It's like when my brother is behind the wheel and he gets out on the old state roads and decides to open up; he hits the gas pedal and we're just cruising – wind whipping our hair, and he's laughing and hollering because he's an absolute nut, and then in a matter of seconds, he brings us back down, and the adrenaline that had the blood thrumming in your ears and your heart pumping is tapering off. The past few years have felt like those precious few seconds where he's going so fast I swear I can see time and space warp in front of my very eyes, and I'm still waiting to come down off it; I'm holding my breath waiting for everything to go back to the standard speed. "You have not had to think about it much until now."

"I guess," I sighed. "It'll be good, right? This will be better?"

Mom smiled and cupped my cheek with her hand. I leaned into her touch just a bit. "Of course. You do not trust me to do what's best for you?" She asked cheekily, and I laughed.

"I do."

"Good." She kissed my forehead. "Sleep."

That's just what I did.

xXx

I guess I should introduce myself or something here, but I think I've missed the part where I'm realistically supposed to do that. Besides – I figure you get to know people best when all you know is their name, and then you skip the backstory and just tag along for the ride.

XXXXX

AN: So – let's see what sort of ride Sadie is in for, shall we?

Thanks for reading!