this town( darry curtis)

prologue

A/N: Honestly, I don't even really know what the hell this is apart from me setting The Outsiders universe as the backdrop for a story that I've had in my head for awhile. Fair warning: We're in for a wild ride. I'll get into the trigger warnings in the notes for the chapters that contain them, so as not to give away the full story, but it's gonna be rough. Laura is...kinda screwed up, which is the result of a lot of stuff that happened both in and out of Tulsa, and it isn't going to be a pretty reunion story when it kicks off. There's a lot to get into before we get there, but I love this version of her( bc I've gone through many )and I hope that you do, too. Speaking of, If you don't care, please let me know what you think after you've read. :)
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Everything was going to change.

It was Friday night. Anticipation hung thick in the air as the high school's football team tried to bring home yet another win. Breathing was more of a suggestion than it was a requirement by that point, and she felt the quiet of the previously buzzing field envelop her like a slightly warm blanket on a much too cold day, finding herself unable to get truly comfortable with the silence when she knew that something would be chasing after it. To say that it was a do or die situation would be the understatement of the century. If they won this single game, all the kids dressed in a flock of red and blue so prominent that they might as well have just melded into one big, spirited blob right then and there, if they conquered this single blip on all of their adolescent radars, their lives would be changed forever. It was a sentiment as sure as one of God's many promises that the majority of those kids had been learning about in church since before they could comprehend, as final as the head cheerleader ending up with the star player on the football team.

Could a life really be changed in two hours?

According to those high school kids, it could.

Laura listened as the final buzzer sounded. Soon, bated breaths turned into cheers that erupted from the football field and spilled out onto the street, threatening to swallow the entire town whole, but the blonde only released a quick and quiet breath as the moment passed her by before she could catch up to it. It wasn't like she really needed to, anyway. She had watched the same scene over and over again enough times to know that they were coming up on the part where the head cheerleader ran into her star player's waiting arms so that they could hug, kiss, graduate, get married in a little white church, have a bunch of kids, and live happily ever after; wash and hang out to dry in the hopes that somebody else might want to wear it one day. A tale as old as time, but one that still brought on a myriad of emotions for the young woman whenever she thought about it.

It was the classic small town fairytale.

And, like all good fairytales, it hadn't existed for her.

Still, with the way that life seemed to work out, everything had changed all the same. Laura drove past the high school that had once been hers, down the dimly-lit streets that she had once walked another lifetime ago with her own special fella, while the collective sounds of kids that weren't her and her friends anymore on the high of another victorious night of football bled through her car's open window, and felt that particular truth lodge its way somewhere on the way up from her gut to the very back of her throat, hands tightening on the wheel of the 1965 mayfair maize Pontiac that had been a graduation gift from her grandmother as she was forced to relearn how to coexist with her own body for a brief moment. It wasn't an unfamiliar feeling, but, usually, when it washed over her, all it took were a few deep breaths to wash it away again. The trouble was that her body had stopped being her own as soon as she'd caught sight of the sign that had led her into Tulsa and she didn't see that changing just because she'd been driving through her hometown for a few minutes.

If anything, Tulsa only made it worse.

Almost nothing had changed there. Aside from a few small things that Laura couldn't bring herself to care about at the moment, as she looked out into the city that had watched her grow up over the years, she couldn't help but to feel a sense of betrayal that the place had refused change for both the years that she'd lived there and the years that she'd been gone. Every building that she dared look at for longer than a millisecond made her feel as though she could walk right into it, come right back out, and be right back in her adolescent body with no effort at all. The town mocked the young woman while it watched her piece that hypotheses together, the glaring yellow streetlights against the pitch black sky feeling more like a police interrogation than they felt like coming home, the football game still ringing in her ears even though she only drove further out of earshot from it. It wasn't a polite welcome, but Laura supposed that she was the one who deserved a lack of manners after what she had done those years ago.

If anything had changed, it was all her fault.

If anything was left to change, she'd take care of it.