Stay By Me

Chapter 4

Dally watched as that broad, Diana her name was, stagger back out to her car. He had smelled the alcohol on her breath, which partially explained her erratic behavior.

But damn! That girl was unlike any other he'd ever met, and not in a good way. He wondered where she got the attitude, considering she looked like a soc and had the money of one. Why did she act like she had a million life problems when she probably had enough money to buy her way out of all of them?

"Do you think that girl's gonna be okay?" Sodapop asked nervously. He was watching as her car quickly backed out of the DX parking lot and shot down the road.

"No," he snorted. "Did you smell her fucking breath? She's just begging to crash."

"Well, maybe she is," he replied in the same nervous voice. "Did you hear what she said? About how her dad hits her, and how she said it's gonna turn out for her? She never said it would turn out good, I'm worried she's gonna do something real stupid and we could have stopped her."

"Then why didn't you? He asked, heading towards the door. "She ain't any of our fucking problems, if she does something dumb that's her own damn fault."

"I was gonna ask her if she had a place she was going tonight, but before I could as she left!" Sodapop defended.

"Well, if you're so concerned, go hunt her down," Dally said as he swung out the door. "But she ain't your damn problem, she can make bad choices for her own fucking self."

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Diana pulled the car over somewhere on a back road. She'd been driving aimlessly for over an hour. It was honestly lucky she'd made it there in the first place, but as she rolled down the windows and let the cool night air in she could tell she was sobering up.

She opened all of the packages and started digging in, eating all of the foods she hadn't been allowed to eat as a gymnast. Part of her felt gross putting the trashy food into her body, but she ignored it. The trashy food tasted good, and she'd missed it. That was what mattered.

After she'd eaten enough junk food and drank enough soda that she was ready to vomit, she lit a cigarette and turned her father's now-dirtied car on and headed back into Tulsa.

She didn't want to go home, and nothing was forcing her to. So she instead just drove around aimlessly. She'd never really gotten a chance to go out, she had no idea what there was to do around Tulsa.

As she made another random turn, she realized that she was over on the East side. That was probably dangerous for her, as she lived over on the West side and obviously looked it, but she shrugged it off. It didn't matter.

She felt guilty as she looked at the houses. Why did she think she had a right to complain, when she had enough money to buy her way out of them? At least she had a way out. She could probably buy herself a future. Whereas the greasers really had every right to be as mad as they were, they wouldn't be able to leave Tulsa if they wanted to.

She looked back around and headed for her house. Life would be significantly easier if she had things she needed to stay out for several days.

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When she neared her house, she parked the car around a block away so her dad wouldn't hear. She could see that all the lights were off, so her father was at least in bed.

She went up to the pitch and jumped to the rail, then used the support beams to climb up on top, where she carefully crawled over to her window. She was very grateful for her gymnastics training, otherwise she probably wouldn't have been strong enough to make that climb so easily.

After slowly opening the window and climbing into her bedroom, she took a moment to look around. She mostly wanted clothes, as well as any other things she might want that she couldn't easily buy.

She emptied out her gymnastics duffel bag and started stuffing it full of clothes, from casual to fancy to borderline trashy. She didn't know what she would need for any scenarios she might find herself in.

Then, she grabbed her makeup bag. There wasn't much in it, but it held everything she knew how to properly use. She stood up and looked around, looking for anything else she would want. She didn't think she would ever come back. 

There were numerous gold medals hanging by her bed, from small local competitions to national ones. Her silver and bronze medals lay discarded in her closet, she'd been taught from a young age that there was no pride from failure, and those medals symbolized her not being good enough.

She felt the slightest bit guilty as the items she took were a baggie of weed and a few bottles of alcohol and not any sentimental items. But she figured she wouldn't need items to remember, she didn't want the memories she had in her head. There were very few actually happy memories she had from that room.

She carefully placed her bag out of the window, then carefully climbed out. She shut the window and started her journey back out to her car, to go wherever she wanted.

She didn't look back.

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