♡ ɴᴇᴠᴇʀ ꜱᴀʏ ɴᴇᴠᴇʀ ♡

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Then suddenly I was sitting on the couch, Darry wrapping my hand in gauze and the rest of the boys surrounding me while I choked out the story. "I thought he was going to kill me!" Then, more quietly, I said something I had hoped wasn't true, "He was trying to kill me. He was so mad. He tried to kill me..."

The whole gang was furious. Steve cursed under his breath and I saw Dally's face get red with anger.

Then Soda wrapped me in a hug and I cried into his chest. "It's okay, Cary," he said, "he ain't gonna hurt you no more." He pet my hair while I cried.

That day, I made myself a promise to never again let a guy touch me like that and get away with it.

I woke up with a start, panicked. I quickly sat up in my bed and looked out the window. It was still dark outside, so I lay back down and try to go back to sleep.

But I couldn't. I kept replaying that moment over and over again in my head and I couldn't get it out. You stabbed me, Jonathan! My words played like a broken record in my mind.

I angrily threw my blankets off of me and went to the kitchen. I was the only one awake, as expected. I looked at the clock above the dining table and saw 2:17.

I poured myself a glass of water and stared out the window above the sink as I drank it. There was a streetlight hovering above the sidewalk, glinting off of our chainlink fence. I didn't hear the same sounds I heard before I fell asleep, but I would hear the occasional car drive by and, of course, the train.

It made me think of the movie Pony and I went to see the day before. It was a Western with John Wayne and another Hollywood blonde-haired, blue-eyed, perfect beauty. There was a scene in the movie involving a train. A train heist, to be more specific.

I didn't particularly like the movie. I only went to be with Pony. It seems that ever since school started back up and I started working again, we had less and less time to hang out together and I wanted to take every chance I could.

I thought about how life would be different if Mom and Dad hadn't died. Darry would probably be off to college on some athletic scholarship and Soda may still be in school. Pony and I would have stayed the same, probably, with the exception of the peace of mind of knowing that our family was going to be okay.

Pony and Darry's fights were becoming more and more frequent, and they were all the same: "Pony, get your grades up." "Why am I not good enough for you?" "Why don't you ever think?" "You treat me like a kid!"

Then I thought about the rest of the gang. Most of them were missing one or both of their parents, and those who weren't hated their guts, except for Two-Bit. We were the only family that had a truly united family until about eight months ago, when the car wreck happened.

Two-Bit is doing okay I suppose. His dad ran off a while ago and left his mother alone with two kids, so he rarely gets to see her anymore because she's always working.

Steve's mom died when he was a kid, and his dad is a loony drunk who hates his guts and kicked him out often. If it wasn't for Soda and the gang, I knew he would have run away ages ago. And I know that his dad wouldn't have cared.

Johnny's home life was almost unlivable. His parents were fighting all the time about God knows what, and when his dad was drunk, he would beat him real bad. It was almost daily I would find a new bruise or cut on him, which I wold usually treat the best I could.

I never knew Dally's parents. All I know is that his dad doesn't care about him and abandoned him on the streets, hence why Dal was in jail at only 10 years old.

It wasn't uncommon to find one of them passed out on the couch one night. Our house was one of the only safe spaces they knew, and we always left the door unlocked in case something happened. So I was surprised when nobody was there. I shrugged it off and knew there would be someone there in the morning.