Change Your Life (The Outsiders fanfic)

Chapter 8

"You're close to Soda, aren't you?" I ask.

"Yeah. We're good buddies. What about you?"

"I don't know who I'm close to."

"I think you're pretty good with Soda's kid-brother and Johnny," he says.

"Everyone says that."

"'Cause it's true."

"I guess so. And you work at the DX, right?"

"Mhm. It's the place to be when you're kinda car crazy. But it makes it bad when a nice looking car has a bad driver."

"What do you mean?"

"Socs, man. They have the Mustangs and Corvairs, the tough cars. But they're bad people with good things."

"Most of them are that way," I tell him.

"Yeah? Well no matter what it takes, we'll still be here and they'll still be there. Fighting won't help none. Socs will still be socs- the rich kids. Greasers with still be greasers- the tough kids."

There's a moment of silence as he continues to work on the car. Things hit and click as he works.

"But whatever. They ain't worth wasting my breath over," he says.

"Are you almost done?" I ask. He nods.

"Just this one last... Alright." He pulls the hood back down and shows me his hands. "This is what I deal with everyday," he says.

"That's gross, man." He smears some on my forehead. I try to pull away as he goes to put some on my cheek.

"Gross now, isn't it?" he teases.

"Ew! Stop!" He finally does after several attempts. I successfully fought him off. But this is nasty.

We both go inside and clean the grease off his hands and my face. Two-Bit watches as I make weird faces to get the stuff off.

"What are you looking at?" I ask him.

"I don't know. Something weird, that's for sure," he says. I roll my eyes at him.

"Very funny."

"Hey, I'm gonna go back to the DX. Two-Bit, wanna walk with me?" Steve asks. Two-Bit looks to me to make sure I'll be alright here by myself. I nod, letting him know it was okay.

"Sure. JT, you'll be alright won't you?" he asks.

"I'll be fine."

"If anything happens, you come find one of us, alright?"

"Alright. Bye, you two!" I tell the boys. They step out the door and I'm left in the silence of the house. I sit on the couch, wondering what I could be doing.

I begin to think about my dad. I still can't believe he has cancer again. But then again he doesn't. As of now, he's not even born yet. Dad wasn't here until 1970. This is almost 1967. But if I stayed in the future, dad would be dying and I wouldn't have met these people. I wouldn't have lived their lives for this long. I wouldn't even had read the book. But I did and here I am.

What I'm upset about is the fact that he never told me. He was always mad at me because he couldn't tell me, if that makes sense. He was always pushing me to be perfect because he knew that deep down, he wasn't. He knew I had a chance at life but his would fall short. He knew he would die soon. Why didn't he tell me so I wouldn't take it as hard?

"Anybody home?" a voice calls as they open the door. Dally walks in by himself. "Hey, JT!" he says a little happily.

I look up at him and his smile fades to a confused frown. He walks over beside me.