Graffiti Girl // Michael Clifford

|| 14 ||

105. Who is the author of 'Night'?
a. Ellie Wiesel

149. What concentration camp was Anne Frank sent to and where she ended up dying?
c. Auschwitz

162. What cyanide-based pesticide was used in the gas chambers?
d. Zyklon B

186. What was Schutzstaffel (SS)?
b. an elite military unit of the Naziparty that served as Hitler's bodyguard and as a special police force

200. What would Miss Gavich name her pet yorkie?
a. Minion

After I finish the last question, I put my pencil down and walk my test to the front of the class and hand it to Miss Gavich.

"How did you do?" she asks.

"Well... I know I got two-hundred right!" I joke and she darkly chuckles.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah. Go sit down, minion."

I laugh as I walk back to my seat, pulling out The Outsiders. I only have a few chapters left and have already balled my eyes out a number of times. I even memorized Robert Frost's poem Nothing Gold Can Stay after reading the part where Johnny dies. I repeated it over in my mind with his last words to Ponyboy ringing in my ears through the tears.

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

Johnny always thought Ponyboy was better than the rest of the hoodlums. He was good and pure--he was gold. He wanted him to hold onto that to separate him from the others. That alone was enough to make me tear up simply due to the fact that Ponyboy always thought Johnny was so much better than him--or anyone, for that matter. He thought he was innocent and sweet and caring and always put others first--especially Ponyboy. And then he basically proves that with the words he chooses to be his last words on earth.

Stay gold, Ponyboy. Stay gold.

Those five words had me in a fit of tears. Even in death, Johnny was so innocent. He still believed that good can remain. He still thought this world would spare even a few of its treasures. After all he went through, how could he still believe that there is even a possibility for something gold to never tarnish? The world doesn't spare goodness--it rips it to shreds and leaves us the pieces to hold onto. The pieces are where the good comes from. They are small, but somehow we have convinced ourselves that it is enough to make this world a beautiful place. We ignore the fact that the only goodness has already been torn apart.

Even Ponyboy succumbs to this sheltered view. I highlighted the quote a few chapters back,

Dally was so real he scared me.

Ponyboy views Soda or Darry as the real-life heroes. He is comfortable with them. They are good. Dally is hard and mean, so it scares him that that is what a hero in the real world can be. A hero can be scary and flawed and so unlike the heroes he reads about in his books. Because if a hero can be so hardened, what in this world can't?

How sad is it to think that the human race is so blind and willing to believe that the world is a wonderful place because accepting the reality is too much to bare? We are all living in a fantasy where gold can remain. Robert Frost seems to be of the few who see the shadowed truth; nothing gold can stay.

I'm in the middle of highlighting a part where Ponyboy accepts the ride home from a man when the bell rings and students begin scrambling to finish the last few questions and turn in their tests. I put my book back in my bag and sling it over my shoulder before walking over to R.