Prologue
Dallas Winston
He was so young, and it was complicated, as life often is. He was so confused, he was so alone, and what was a boy supposed to do? Surrounded by liquor bottles and smothered by words, like whips cracking down on his fragile body. His father’s presence was inescapable, like a menacing hand that never left his throat, leaving an invisible bruise and a lack of air in his lungs.

He was so young, but not anymore. He was getting older, beginning to resemble a man, albeit a broken, unhappy one. It was still complicated, it was still messy, but he was growing bigger and stronger. He was still confused, still more or less alone, but he learned to ignore those facts, to bury them so deep he could not unearth them if he tried. Now surrounded by liquor bottles of his own and smothered by words from his own bitter tongue, breaking free from his father’s tyranny and living his own life. 

His frail body, easily bruised, was growing. He was tall, lean, with pale skin that healed quickly over constant reopening wounds. The city boy with dark hair and brooding eyes was stumbling across the dirt underneath the Oklahoman sky, from one young girl’s arms to the next, the naive ones thinking they could change him, the cold ones not bothering to try. He stayed with the cold ones longer, being rather stony himself. He couldn’t stand the constant nagging, the need for connection. He couldn’t stand the wonder and affection. He couldn’t understand the hope. He could only understand the pain. In his thoughts, in his own words, he could only deserve the pain. 

Ponyboy Curtis
Everything was just the way it should have been. It wasn’t perfect, but it was enough. He had a home, he had two brothers, he had a mother who spoke kind words and a father who rarely went near a bottle. He had a dog. It was a yellow cur dog that was getting a little old, its back left leg slowly losing its mobility. The dog’s name was Lucky, but it was starting to be anything but. It was beginning to howl at all hours of the night, keeping trouble away and the house awake until he could finally coax him up into the bed he shared with his two brothers, where it was crowded but overflowing with love. 

He was finally beginning to feel older, and, although he knew how foolish it sounded, like one of the big kids. He was going to be a sophomore in high school soon, a grade above some of the kids who used to make fun of him in middle school, the only time he thought he was going to be above any of the handsome kids in khakis with big family names who got picked up by nice cars. His parents were proud of him, his brothers were proud of him, and he was proud of himself. He was going to be on the track team and maybe even take a couple art classes, although he didn’t draw as often as he read, as much as he liked words, as much as he liked the power of them without throwing a punch because he was never quite strong or brave enough to make a fist. He thought that maybe, if there were thousands of books in the world, millions of poems in the world, he could write at least a small sum of them.

Darry Curtis
He was still young and he knew it, yet he was unaware he was still a child. He was a likable guy, last time he had been in school, he was pretty popular. He never had to deal with sitting alone at a table, never had to look around to start a conversation with someone he didn’t think would like him. He did what he did best–played football. He was the captain, and he took on the leadership role very well. He learned a lot about what it meant to be a leader that year. He knew how to cooperate, how to make the rules and take up the space in a way that made him approachable but firm. When he graduated, he was voted Boy of the Year. He felt like the golden boy of the East Side, with a future that wouldn’t involve people forgetting his name or crummy checks.

Yet in an instant–a moment that passed like a single breath amongst a thousand–an accident took away his mother, his father, his dog, and his future. 

He had nothing except an old house, a rusty T-bird Ford, and two brothers. 

He thought for a while, about his enrollment in college that would start in September.

He thought about his dreams.

He thought about his life.

He thought about his peers, the ones who would go on to do better things than he, whether they were qualified or not, simply because their parents could buy their way to the top.

He thought about his future.

And he thought about the future of his brothers.

Sodapop Curtis
His brother was much like the house they lived in, weary and worn out, filled with dead memories.

He came up with that idea late at night while he anxiously lay in bed, while waiting for the sun to rise again. He had a test in the morning, and he would fail, just like he failed all the others. By the time the second quarter started he would have straight Fs, excluding auto mechanics and gym.

His little brother sat at the desk, done with studying for the night but holding a Jane Austen book under his nose. He was more likely to come up with the thought that he had, saying thoughtful things like that all the time.

He, however, was like a seashell; pretty but devoid of real use and value. His little brother, deep and wise for his age, recognized for his intelligence. His older brother was voted Boy of the Year, practically everyone’s favorite person.

He wanted to be like them. He wanted to be taken seriously.   

So while his little brother skipped a grade and his older one ruefully tore his acceptance letter, he kept his one dreamy, intelligent thought to himself.

Steve Randle
He was used to being second best. Hell, he was used to being off the roster. 

His friend–tall, handsome, charming–always outshone him, there was no doubt in his mind. That whole family, really, was superior to his own. While his friend’s father took him to the ranch, he listened to his father complain about him borrowing money and urging him–demanding him, to be more specific–to leave the house and get a life, beer breath sour on his father’s tongue and coming off in rancid waves. When his friend needed help in school, tutors lined up to help him out. His friend never thought to ask him. Those few times when he did try to get a tutor, he ended up with a useless one, most likely a girl who got the name wrong when she heard about the opportunity outside of the cafeteria or in the hallways. Once he even had his friend’s brother try to teach him. Instead of learning, they spent most of the time arguing and it ended with him leaving in a huff. She didn’t try to feign interest and asked questions about his friend the whole time, leading to him failing the test. Even on days they were both unprepared and got wrong answers, his friend got  a better percentage or a higher GPA, the teachers explaining poorly about “unforeseen circumstances” or “impact of certain aspects of the test”.

It seemed that anytime he did something, his friend would always do it better. His friend would always be better. His friend would always get better. Better girls, better pay,  better family, better grades. They didn’t seem to realize much except for his friendship with Prince Charming in Flannel, like his intelligence and his talent with cars. He got good grades for a Greaser, and he knew practically everything there was to know about an engine. He taught his friend the fundamentals of auto mechanics. And when they both wanted to get jobs, they decided to work at the DX, where he hoped grades wouldn’t matter much, and they would be treated like everyone else–simply an extra set of hands. Instead, his friend let the secret leak, still naive and unaware of how people flock toward him, how the world revolves around him. It hadn’t even been two days before girls crowded into the gas station to giggle and bat their eyes at his friend at the counter, while he lay beneath the car hood, hands covered in grease. 

Johnny Cade
He didn’t remember a time when he felt safe in his own home. If his parents weren’t fighting, they were uniting against one opponent, one victim–him.

He was an easy target. Dark skin just shy of a Negro’s, black hair full of grease, darting eyes that matched. People probably would’ve thought he was black, except he didn’t live out in Brumley like the other dark-skinned kids did. He always looked like someone was getting ready to strike him, always on edge. He was less than threatening–more than frightened. His voice, heavy with a southern drawl and shaky with fear, made almost all of his statements sound like questions, and, in times of great alarm, he sounded as though he had grounded himself in reality only moments before. It was clear he was pushed around constantly, at home, at school, on the streets underneath the dim lamplight, where shadows were heavy and elongated on the sidewalk.

His life consisted of hiding, from one danger to the next, while keeping an eye out for anything that moved. He would wake up, go to school, try  to cease to exist, avoid going home, avoid the voices and smells that belonged to it. He would stumble out to an empty lot, start a small fire, lay in the grass. He would look up at the stars, gaze at the night, the darkness punctured by prickles of light. He would shiver in the cold air, flinch at the leaves that rustle in the wind. He would revel in the silence, the inaudible voices, drown himself in the empty world, strip from his armor and let down his guard. 

He would allow himself to simply exist.

And then he would let his eyes close beside the withering fire, letting the light die, but not before he was sound asleep.

Keith "Two-Bit" Matthews
He could do very little. He never was very heroic. He knew that. But if there was one thing he could do, it was make people laugh.

He first found out with his family, his mother and sister. On those late nights when he found his mother coming home smelling like beer and what else drunk men spilled on her during her late night shift. Bags under her eyes, proof of her diligence, her body swaying with fatigue as she tried not to fall over completely. He would make a couple witty comments, and she would perk up slowly, like a flower gaining the strength to reach out towards the sun. He would think of it as a gig every night. Before he knew it, his whole life was a show. He had suddenly fallen into this character’s skin, a caricature of himself. His friends no longer could tell the difference.

“That’s not like you,” they’d say when he turned down a drink or skipped a drag race.

So he would down the beer or watch the race. He didn’t mind too much.

He got a nickname for it, too, made the whole circumstance more real, more final. Two-Bit, they called him, starting with Darry and spreading like a disease until nobody even remembered his real name–Keith. He thought Keith was a lousy name, so he just went along with it.

What bothered him was how it was getting harder to make his mother smile, to make her laugh. The nights were getting longer while he would stay up and wait with his kid-sister, asleep while she leaned her little head against his shoulder. His one ability, his one power, was being taken from him, torn from his grip like water washing over the shore, taking a little, but greedily coming back for more. 

He tried to be funnier, more outrageous, more whimsical. He tried to help.

He looked after his sister, did everything he could, because he loved her more than he could say. She still laughed at his jokes, still found him to be a hero, the man he wished he was. Whenever he felt powerless, significant, and needed a reminder of who he was and why he was doing it all, he longed to come home and indulge in his childish fantasies of sitting on the couch with a chocolate cake on the scratched coffee table, watching Mickey Mouse with his sister, hoping she would never have to live the way he did, that she would never grow up.