Beach Babe | The Outsiders | Johnny Cade

| Reading | 30 |

I roll my eyes "What did she tell you." I say dead serious

     He, I'm not kidding, pulls out a fucking list. It's a small crumpled up piece of paper with writing sprawled across the length of one side. Soda starts laughing as soon as the list is pulled out, I'm guessing Steve told him every little thing on there.

     When Darry stands up and grabs the list from Steve it surprises all of us, he's never really playful or emotional at all so it catches us all off guard. He holds it up to where Steve can't get it even when he jumps and reads it. I hide my face because I have no idea what could be on there and I just hear him, Soda, and Steve laughing.

After he's done laughing Darry turns to me and gives the paper back to Steve "Did you really fall off of a roof into a pool?" I cringe. Two-bit and Johnnys eyes widen as they just stare at me

"Yes- well I didn't fall. I jumped." I'm cringing remembering 15-16 year old Stacy drunk and screaming "watch this" as she did a canon ball from 20 feet in the air.

"Why?" Two asks amused

I run my hand through my hair  "I was drunk and stupid."

"Were you really a cheerleader up until last year?" Soda asks

"Yup, since third grade." Sometimes I wish I still did it, I was absolutely ripped as a cheerleader. I've lost all that muscle now.

Somehow Two-Bit ends up with the list so now him and Johnny are looking it over. I grab a couple beers from the fridge because I'm going to need a buzz to get through that list and the questions that come with it.

"You really put your fist through a wall?" Johnny asks in pure disbelief. It's so nice to hear his voice

"No that one was my brother."

"Theo?" Steve asks

"Nope Richard. It was a wall in our bedroom, the football team he was on lost a pretty important game and he came home mad and his hand went straight through the drywall." I smile and remember laughing at him when his wrist got stuck in the wall.

"There's just no way you fought four guys drunk and won. I don't believe it." Two says looking at the list

"I did! It was more like three though, the fourth guy didn't even know what planet we were on. It wasn't really a fair fight either, they were all drunker than me."

Steve rolls his eyes and laughs "Of course you were drunk!"

"I was drunk during almost everything on that list! That's why I don't drink Yeager anymore." I laugh

"I still don't believe you fought three guys, there's no way you had the strength for that." Two says

"I don't know, cheerleaders are strong! Plus the day we met she threw her brother over herself like he was barely anything" Darry says

Soda looks down thinking "Yeah, I mean that is true." I smile

The questions are fired at me by everyone, I try to answer them as fast as possible.

Did you ever get dropped as a cheerleader? No.

Did you break a pool table by dancing on it? ...yes

How many parties did you go to? Too many to count

You lit a house on fire with a firework? No that was a rumor, but I did light a trash can on fire with a cigarette

It was all fine till one particular question came up

"Did you really break your wrist from falling on it?" Soda asks. I nod ashamed.

"How many bones have you broken Stace?" Darry asks exasperated. I respond 5 "How?"

"Well I broke my ankle from falling down some stairs when I was four, I broke my thumb in a fight with Richard and eight, when I was ten I broke my ankle from a misplaced landing after a cheer stunt, my wrist when I was 15, and my ex-boyfriend broke my ankle again last year." Damn that's a lot, do I just have brittle bones or something?

"Anything else on the list?" I didn't realize what I had said so the room being silent while they all stared at me felt odd "what?"

"What do you mean your ex broke your ankle?" Steve asks in a tone so serious it's almost scary.

I chug the beer I just opened Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Guess they all had to find out sooner or later.

"Uh.. my ex kinda kidnapped me when I tried to break up with him and held me hostage and abused me for four months. He broke my ankle so I couldn't escape." The silence is deafening. Everyone is frozen in place like statues, even Johnny and Soda who already knew.

I open the second beer and drink the whole thing. Still silence. I don't know wether to cry, run away, or laugh. I've never seen the gang like this. Two-bit looks terrified, Steve looks like he might cry, and Darry is giving me that worried dad look I haven't seen from anyone in years, and it's making me want to break down.

This week fucking sucks. Little did I know next week all hell would break loose.

"Alright well I'm going to bed because if all of you keep looking at me like this I'll break down and cry." I very quickly rush to Pony's old room and sit down on the bed. I open my bag and get my dad's journal.

   It's a small red book that's quite worn around the edges. When I open it I see my dad's hand writing 'Property of Sawyer Hartley Greene' he had the most beautiful cursive handwriting I've ever seen.

      I flip to the first page and it's a drawing, I recognize it immediately, it's me and Rich sitting on the edge of a peer on a lake back in California from a distance, the trees and sunset in the back are all too familiar. We went for a week every summer. I remember talking to him while our dad supervised, I guess I never noticed him drawing us.

      Each page has a drawing on one side then a page full of writing about it, memory after memory he thought was important enough to write down. I carefully read every single word, not wanting to miss a syllable. The drawings are so beautiful to me, my moms eyes, Me and all my brothers and my mom standing on a boat, fireworks on the Fourth of July, my grandmother and grandfathers grave.

       I reach the last page with anything on it. The drawing is Rich and I asleep on the couch of our hotel room after the Elvis concert. We didn't even make it to bed, we sat down for a second while waiting for our dad to finish showering so we could brush our teeth. That was hours before he died.

I made it through without crying? I'm getting stronger I guess.

I move onto Rich's diary, it's page after page of messy handwriting. A little after I start reading I hear Ponyboy come home. I don't know what's worse, the fact that everyone was quiet enough for me to hear him come home or that it stayed quiet.

Pony had just gotten back from seeing some new movie at the theaters with Josie. Those two cleared things up after the drive-in incident and decided to go on another movie date. 

After being distracted by the sound of pony coming home through the walls, I try and get some sleep. Surely I won't have a nightmare tonight right?

Right?

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Thanks for reading!!

Word count : 1294