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Whispers have been following Ponyboy around all day.
He doesn’t know what his classmates might be whispering about. At first, he thinks he must be imagining things but after a while, he knows it’s directed at him. Stares accompany the words, hushed as they are, and conversations are abruptly ended when he walks into a room or past lockers.
He knows the signs. It isn’t the first time, after all.
Last time, he’d known the looks and comments had been about Johnny, and the night at the fountain. He’d known they were coming too- he'd begged Darry to let him stay home just a little while longer in hopes of avoiding it, but Darry had all but carried him through the doors of the school to drop him into his homeroom by the collar of his t-shirt.
This time, he has no clue. He wracks his brain, searching for something he might have said or done to draw attention to himself, but he draws a blank. So instead, he keeps his head down and tries to avoid anyone’s gaze as he makes his way from class to class.
Until he’s ambushed by Linda Hannigan as he’s trying to leave at the end of the day. Pony doesn’t know much about Linda-he's pretty sure she has an older sister the same age as Darry, and she’s the head of almost every extra-curricular club the school has, but that’s about it. He briefly thinks he should know more, considering they’ve been in school together since kindergarten. Although, there hardly seems much point in worrying about it now, they are three weeks away from graduation.
Before he has a chance to do more than meet Linda’s eye, she thrusts a shiny new yearbook at him.
“You hadn’t picked up yours, so I offered to bring it to you.” Linda tells him brightly, twirling the end of her ponytail around her fingertip.
“Thanks, Linda.” Pony answers
A quick glance tells him it’s this year’s, and it’s not an accident that he hadn’t collected it. He’d only ordered one because Darry gave him the money for it and asked him to.
“They were being kept in that little side room by the library.” Linda continues eagerly “I’m surprised you didn’t pick it up while you were in there working on the paper.”
Darry and Soda had been so pleased when Pony had announced he’d joined the school newspaper. They’d even stuck Pony’s first article on the fridge, and shoved it under the nose of anyone who stood too close to them for a second too long. Pony didn’t have the heart to tell them it was only because the guidance counsellor had suggested it, to boost his college applications. He likes it well enough, but it isn’t the kind of writing that pulls at him.
“I forgot I guess.” Pony says with a small, forced laugh that seems to do the trick in convincing Linda, since she shoots him another wide grin and puts her hand lightly on his arm.
“Well, I’m glad I could help.” She chimes “I could sign it for you, if you want.”
“Sure Linda.” Pony replies, resisting the urge to sigh. Actually, he just wants to go home. He doesn’t want to stand around while Linda swirls something-probably the same message she’ll put in the yearbook of whoever will let her. But Linda is nice enough, and she thinks she’s done him a favour, so he’ll wait. He watches as she plucks the book back out of his hands and flips through the pages towards the back.
“Wait, stop.” he tells her suddenly as something catches his eye, and all but snatches the book back. Linda looks surprised, but doesn’t stop him. Instead, she watches uneasily as he thumbs back through the pages to confirm what he thinks he saw a flash of.
In the middle of the yearbook, right after the pages of seniors, there is a page dedicated to students who didn’t survive to the end of high school. This year there are three pictures on the page. A freshman girl who had been diagnosed with cancer, a boy Pony doesn’t recognise but remembers Darry telling him had died in a car accident two weeks after the end of winter break.
And Johnny.
“I’m sorry Ponyboy, I thought you knew it was in there.” Linda tells him softly, and to give her credit, she does look genuinely upset.
One thing he’s heard over and over again when working with the other kids on the paper is ‘a picture is worth a thousand words.’
Except, looking at this picture, he can only think of one.
Fuck.
Because fuck, he hadn’t expected to see Johnny’s picture in the yearbook. Fuck, he hadn’t expected to see Johnny’s picture in the yearbook. Fuck, Johnny looks so young. Younger than Ponyboy can remember, which feels slightly ridiculous. Ponyboy had been six years old when he’d first met eight-year-old Johnny Cade. His best friend is at least thirteen in the picture, so why can’t Pony remember him ever looking like this? Johnny hadn’t been the best at school, which wasn’t surprising considering everything he’d had to endure, and he’d been held back. Pony had forgotten that Johnny would have been a senior with him this year.
What else could he not remember anymore, and not even know it?
“I don’t care what people are saying,” Linda tells him confidently “I think he deserves to be in the yearbook.”
“People are saying Johnny doesn’t deserve to be in the yearbook?” Pony asks, though his voice sounds strangled, small and distant even to his own ears.
“Well, yeah, he did kill someone, Ponyboy.”
All of a sudden, there’s no air in the hallway. The floor tilts, and the walls start to spin. He’s vaguely aware of Linda talking to him, but his head feels like he’s underwater. He mumbles something to her, he’s not sure that it even makes sense, but he’s quick to scramble away. He resists the urge to run-barely- until he's far enough away from school that it won’t add to the chatter.
Then he takes off, and he’s flying in the direction of home.
He’s pushing through the front door before he can really comprehend how he’s made the whole journey home without realising, and he’s relieved to find the house empty. He feels himself unravel, frozen in the middle of the living room, and wraps his arms tightly around himself to try and stay in one piece. He’s so sure he’s about to shatter, he forces himself to put one foot in front of the other to make it to his bedroom.
Falling onto the bed, he draws his knees up to his chest, and pushes the heels of his hands against his eyes, but it does little to supress the images flashing in front of his vision- Johnny, Dally, the fountain, Bob, a burning church, a sterile hospital room.
He struggles to push them away for what feels like an eternity, but by the time he hears Darry thump through the front door, the screen door slamming loudly behind him, Pony does, thankfully, feel like he can take a full breath again. Darry’s stomping footfalls make their way down the hallway, so Pony is quick to leap up and sit at his desk instead. His homework is usually the first thing he does when he gets home, so he hopes if he acts like that is what he’d been doing, Darry won’t notice if he doesn’t quite look himself yet.
He's not exactly sure why he doesn’t feel ready to tell Darry about the yearbook yet. Recently, it feels almost like they’ve gone back to how it used to feel between them before Mom and Dad died, and it has taken a lot of years and a lot of heated conversations to get to this point. But still, he decides he’s going to keep this one to himself, just a little while longer, no matter how nonsensical if feels.
“Hey, Pony.” His big brother greets as he appears in the doorway a moment later, his brows pulled together as his eyes flicker over his little brother “Are you alright?”
“I’m fine.” Pony tells him with what he hopes is an easy smile. Apparently not quite convinced, Darry wanders in and lowers himself down onto the mattress across from Ponyboy. Darry is looking at him so intently, that Pony has to hope he doesn’t look across and see that although his notebook is open in front of him, the page is still empty.
“Are you sure? Soda called, he said you were tearing down the street past the DX like a bat out of hell.”
Damn.
“Oh, right,” Pony starts quickly, and finds he can’t quite bring himself to meet Darry’s concerned gaze. “I wasn’t feeling good, I wanted to get home for some aspirin.”
“You feel better now?” Darry questions, apparently satisfied with the explanation. He knows how hard Pony has been working in the lead up to graduation. A headache doesn’t seem like too much of a stretch of the imagination.
“Sure, D. I’m ok.” Pony feels his gut squirm a little over how easy the lies falls out of his mouth, no matter how well intentioned it might be. “You don’t have to worry about me.”
“I know you’re almost eighteen Pone, but you’re still my baby brother.” Darry tells him softly, giving Pony’s shoulder a light squeeze “Worrying about you and Soda is my job, and I’m not looking for a new one anytime soon.”
They sit in a few beats of comfortable silence, before Darry announces he’s going to start dinner, and pushes himself to his feet with a tired grunt.
Ponyboy spends the evening pretending nothing out of the ordinary has happened, for the sake of both his own and Darry’s sanity. He finishes his homework, he sits in the living room with a paperback in his lap, and eats dinner with his brothers, chatting about their days, and the start of potential plans for the summer.
He thinks he’s done a pretty convincing job.
But, that night, for the first time in longer than he cares to think about, Ponyboy has a nightmare.