By Codename
Emi
This story is undoubtedly a spin-off of The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton.
My character is named
Sugar. I could sit here and tell you the
whole story, but I won’t, so just read on!
One Friday, as
I was walking home from school, I noticed someone lying in the vacant lot. I approached them to find that it was Sugar. She looked sad. I walked around her as she watched me with
her glassy blue eyes.
“Pony…” she
whispered. I dropped down beside her and she suddenly
began crying. I’d never seen her cry like this before. Actually, I’d never seen her cry at all and
seeing her cry now scared me.
“Sugar,’ I said
softly, rubbing her shoulder, “Are you okay?”
“Oh, Ponyboy, just hold my hand for a while, I’ll be alright
soon.” So, I lied down beside her and
held her hand as she laid her head on my chest.
“Ponyboy, what am I to you?” she asked finally.
“Sugar, what
are you talking about?”
“Tell me what I
mean to you.”
“Well your part
of the gang and…”
“Oh, Pony, I’m
just some homeless hood that carries a blade and hides from everything! I’m never gonna get
anywhere!” She started crying
again.
“No!” I said, “That’s not true! You’re pretty and nice and a wonderful friend
and a great actor and are the only one that can really understand me except
Soda!”
“Really,
Pony? I’m all those things?”
“Of course you
are, Sugar.”
“And you love
me, right?”
“Yeah, course I
love you.”
She laid a kiss
on my cheek and I held her hand again.
After a while,
I said, “Soda’s cooking supper tonight, wanna go see
what he's made up?”
“Sure, why
not?” she replied as we stood up and walked to the house.
When we walked
in Soda was cooking up some strange colored noodles while Darry
sat watching TV. Sugar plopped down next
to him on the couch next to Darry as he flipped
through the channels.
I sat at the
table and talked to Soda.
“Ponyboy!”
Sugar yelled as she pulled the TV remote out of Darry’s
hands. “When you gonna
teach me how to read that book of yours?”
She got up and ran around the couch and Darry
started wrestling playfully with her.
“How ‘bout now?” I hollered back and walked towards my room.
Sugar and Darry rolled into my path and pulled me down. I joined them in rolling around on the
floor. Unknowingly, we rolled into the
kitchen and Soda tripped over us, throwing blue noodles everywhere. Then there were four of us rolling on the
floor. I noticed Sugar roll away from
the tussle to lay panting hard against the wall. I got off Darry’s
stomach and went to sit next to her.
“You feeling
alright?” I asked.
“Yeah, I just ain’t got much sleep lately. Plus, I got this!” She showed me the remote, and rose to her
feet. “Get thee hence, those who fight
for nothing. Hail the queen of the
remote!” Soda made a lunge for her, but
she dodged him, running to the couch again.
“Hey, I don’t
know about you, Pony, but I’m starving!” Darry said, rising and pulling some leftover chicken and
chocolate cake out of the refrigerator.
Soda and Sugar ran into the room and grabbed a seat at the table as Darry passed them some cake.
After supper,
Sugar and I went to look at my book. I
searched in the drawers for it in me and Soda’s room but when I turned around
Sugar was dead asleep on the bed. I
pulled off her makeshift sandals, covered her with a blanket and tiptoed out of
the room.
I slept next to
Sugar that night, since Soda had chosen to sleep on the couch instead of waking
her up, and shortly after
I
about fell out of the bed when I heard Sugar cry out, “No! No, Daddy!
Don’t hit Mommy! Mommy!!” She thrashed
around on the bed and then jolted awake.
“Ponyboy… Oh Pony…”
she gasped and climbed out of the bed.
By this time both Darry and Soda were awake
and she went to sit in Darry’s lap in front of the
couch. Tears rolled down her cheeks
uncontrollably as Darry rubbed her arms and Soda
patted her hand.
When she
finally stopped crying she started her story, “You know I didn’t have a name
before your mother found me? I’d been
out on my own since before I could remember.
She was the most beautiful and the nicest person I’ve ever met. You know why I didn’t come to the
funeral? I was scared, hiding from it
all. I was real scared. I
still am, scared of losing too many things. I guess it
comes from when I was real little, before I went street. It
was the reason I ran off and it has haunted me to this day. I
remember it vaguely, my father beat my mother, and I couldn’t have been more
then seven at the time. That one time he was beating
her real bad I knew I had to stop him cause somethin’
bad was gonna happen.
I couldn’t though, and the next thing I remember was seeing her lying
there, not moving and I screamed at Daddy and ran off.” She had to stop to keep form crying, but the
tears came anyway. “I can’t run, I can’t
hide! I can’t even face it! What am I gonna
do?”
“Shhhh, Sugar…” Darry
whispered, “Don’t cry anymore, babyface, it’ll be all
right.” He brushed away her tears. “We’ll be here for you.” She leaned back into his arms and closed her
eyes, shutting out the tears as Soda and I held both her hands.
“Why can’t I
jump ‘em?” I
heard Steve say off to the distance.
“Cause I said so,” Two-bit replied, “Come on, lets go whip up something
for breakfast.” I heard a crash and a
thud.
Good ol’ Two-bit, I thought, rising, stiff legged to walk to the
kitchen.
“Hey there
Pony!”
…
We were driving along in Steve’s car,
Soda, Sugar, and me, when suddenly someone came out in front of us at top speed
out of the alley. Soda swerved so we
wouldn’t hit them, but the back of our car spun and slammed into the front of
the other car.
The driver jumped out and so did
Soda. The driver of the other car turned
out to be a drunk Soc.
He was alone, which surprised me, mostly they come in groups, and he
wasn’t even in Soc territory.
“Must of
murdered his buddies and stole their beer,” Sugar joked, apparently thinking
the same as I.
Our car was wrecked more than the Soc’s, but since he was drunk, he was raving.
“Hey look man,” Soda was saying, “you
bring your car by my shop sometime and I’ll give it a go around for free.”
The Soc muttered something and then
said, “Ain’t gonna let no
stupid greaser lay a hand on my car.”
“Fine, then, have it that way.”
The Soc again, “You wanna
fight me greaser?!”
Sugar jumped out of the car and grabbed
Soda’s arm. “Hey, Soda let’s just give
him some cash and get outta here. This ain’t
something to be fighting over.”
“Greaser!” the Soc yelled, “I’ll tell
you what you can give me a go around with! You let me
have good time with that foxy broad of yours and I’ll let you off clean.”
Sugar blew up. She ran up to the Soc and placed her fist
firmly into his cheek. His hands flew up
to his face and Sugar gave him another good one in the stomach. Then she ran back toward the car, grabbing
Soda and jumping into the driver’s seat.
We sped off crazily.
Sugar pulled off into an empty parking
lot, stopped the car and got out.
“What were you thinking?” Soda asked. I was
thinking the same thing. She threw her
arms around Soda’s neck and buried her face into his shoulder. Then Sugar looked up and instead of crying,
as I believed her to be, she was laughing.
Soda looked at me and we both started laughing too.
“Man, I don’t know what got into me,
but that was the most fun I ever had in my life!”