Not What It Seems ||An Outsiders Fanfiction||

Chapter 1

Anyways, I hadn't come home at all, that school year. It was my junior year of college and everything was going perfect. I had straight A's, and I wanted to keep them. So I stayed in my dorm, studying and writing, not having time to go visit my family. I planned to go home that summer, which was only a few months away, and spend my entire vacation before Senior year there, but then I got that dreaded phone call...

"Hello? Ana and Leesha's room. Ana speaking," I said into the phone.

"Annalise... It's me," Darry said. Usually hearing my brothers voice brightened my day, but he sounded sad this time.

"Hey. Everything okay?" I asked him. There was a momentary pause on the other line, making me a bit nervous.

"Are you sitting down?" He asked me. I was not, but luckily, my spiral chord reached over to my desk chair, so I sat there.

"Y-yeah... Why?" I asked him.

"Ana, I don't know how to say this, but you need to be home... by tomorrow," He said. My eyes widened. Tomorrow?! What about all of my tests? What about the homework? What about Ella?

"I can't...." I said. I wished that I could, I missed my brothers, my parents, the gang, but school started to get in the way, and I couldn't go home and visit like I did every weekend during Freshman year.

"Well, you have to, Ana. Mom and dad got in a car accident," He said. Right then, my heart dropped down into my stomach.

"What?" I yelled.

"Are they okay?" I demanded into the phone. And I could tell by the way that Darry didn't respond, that his breathing became heavy, and a few sobs escaped from his lips that they were most certainly not okay. I had only seen my brother cry a few times in my entire life. Darrel Shaynne Curtis Jr. is the strongest person I've ever met, inside and out, and I can still remember the pain I heard him in during that phone call.

"Oh my god," I whispered into the phone, realizing what was going on.

"Yeah. They're gone, sis..." Is all he had to respond with.

"Oh my god... I... I'll be home tonight," I whispered before hanging up the phone. And then I sat at my desk, staring at the notebook and pencil that I had sitting there. I was writing a note to Ella, my girlfriend, for our 6 month anniversary.

I remember tears steaming down my face and I just watched them as they soaked my paper. And then I ripped it up, because I only wanted the best for Ella, and the best wasn't a tearstained, handwritten in pencil note.

That was when Leesha, my roommate walked in.

"Hey," She said to me, smiling. Her beautiful light brown eyes lit up as she walked into the room. Her poofy hair was over her face, but she tucked it behind her ears and ran over to me as soon as she saw me.

"What happened?" She asked, kneeling on the ground next to my chair and putting her arms around me. I was hysterical for a few minutes, bawling my eyes out, but after a few minutes I felt calm enough to tell her what Darry told me. That my parents got in a car accident and passed away, and I needed to get home, tonight. Except at that point, I didn't have a car.

She offered to drive me the four hour drive back home, and ended up going  to the funeral with me.

She stayed by my side through the whole funeral, trying to keep me calm, but it was hard. Between the gang in hysterics, the tears in all of our family friends and parents co-workers eyes, not even Leesha could hold her tears back. Darry was the only one who didn't cry at all, but I knew he was the most upset. No one said anything about it to him, though.

Leesha and I both stayed in my room, sharing the bed. When Ella found out about that, she broke up with me immediately, and that was six months down the drain...

But here I am now, back in my childhood bedroom during Christmas Vacation of my Senior Year of College, and I couldn't be happier.

"Hey, where's Ponyboy?" I ask Soda. He shrugs.

"His room, maybe?" He suggests. I nod and walk out of my room, Soda following close behind me.

"Ponyboy?" I say, knocking on his door. He opens it slowly.

"Oh. Hey, sis," He says. I take my youngest brother in my arms, hugging him tightly.

"I missed you," I tell him. He just shrugs, trying to escape himself from my grasp.

"Then why don't you ever come home?" He asks me. I'm momentarily stunned, unsure of how to respond.

"Because, Ponyboy. I have school. And things here... are just hard," I say. It's not a total lie, ever since mom and dad passed, it has been different and hard for me. School is also a struggle, but one of the real reasons I haven't been home as much as I should be is because of myself. I live a closeted lie here...

A/N: So that's chapter one! Yes, Ana is lesbian. If you don't support that, then you probably shouldn't keep reading, but if you do, then great! Keep going.