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The moon shone down bright on the car seat in the lot. Last week Ponyboy had made some offhanded comment about moonlight not being a real thing. It was a reflection of the Sun’s light. Johnny had no clue if he was telling the truth, but Pony was smart so he assumed it was. Plus, it goes to show nothing was to be trusted.
Johnny had his head leaning back against the seat and stared at the faux moonlight against the night sky. Well, he gazed with one good eye; the other was swollen shut. His entire body was on fire. The pain wasn’t new, most nights were like this.
Somehow, staring at the stars transported him worlds away. He wasn’t sitting on a ratty old car seat in a town no one knew existed. No, he was space dust, whirling around the cosmos at the speed of light. He was the darkness that made the stars shine bright. He was the stars. He was everything and nothing.
Johnny wanted to be anything except what he was. A broken boy unloved by his own parents. That’s what he thought he was.
Most days he felt broken, unloved, no matter what the Curtis’ might say. They just didn’t understand. Their parents, when they were still alive, loved them more than Johnny could ever imagine loving something. He had envied that, until they passed away and suddenly Johnny was glad he love people, he didn’t trust people like that. It would only hurt more when they were gone.
A bitter wind blew through the lot, right through Johnny’s jean jacket. For a night in late September it had gotten rather cold faster than expected. He shivered but made no move to curl in on himself. Tonight was about the stars. Losing himself in the stars.
It didn’t last, good things never do. A cluster of clouds had rolled in, swollen with rain. All that wind must have blown them in to block out the clouds. His escape.
Still, Johnny stared at the sky hoping it would pass and he would lose himself again. He ignored the scuff of shoes on the pavement. He ignored everything. Eyes up, kid.
“Looks like rain,” the voice said, though Johnny could tell just by the sound of their approach. Only Dallas Winston carried himself like that, not a person to be messed with. Heavy footsteps. He meant business. “You ain’t gonna sleep out here?”
Johnny didn’t answer, not that he was expected to. Their group didn’t push him to talk, for which he was grateful, they respected his silence.
Dallas was the exception.
He was never one to follow the rules; Johnny knew that as far back as he could remember, back to the time before Dally had left for New York. The city had changed him. Dallas Winston was still inclined, if not more so, to blatantly ignore ever rule and guideline set before him. That included respecting Johnny’s being the quiet one of the group.
It didn’t irk him as much as he wished it would. Dally was the only person in the world who could coerce Johnny into having a full conversation and actually enjoy it. He understood what life in hell was like where many of the other’s didn’t. They lived in their own personal hell, but none of them would trade it to be in Jonny’s shoes: beaten by Socs or his parents, starving some nights and sick the others.
Dally understood hell. Not Johnny’s hell, but still hell nonetheless.
New York had been his hell, though the way he described it made the city seem exciting. The stories were like the moonlight. Yet, Johnny couldn’t help but to be captivated by them.
Some nights, when the weather was poor and Johnny couldn’t bring himself to bother the Curtis’ he would find himself at Buck’s, climbing the stairs to Dally’s room. There were times they would sit in silence, passing a cigarette or three between them, and sharing a beer. Other days, the days where Johnny could hardly stand, he would spill out everything. Every hope. Every dream. Every fear.
By the end of those nights Dally knew Johnny Cade like the back of his hand.
Johnny liked the change of pace. He liked being the one doing the talking for once, talking without fear of being beaten. He felt safe with Dally. Not that he didn’t feel safe with any of the other’s, it was just that whenever it was just Johnny and Ponyboy, Pony did all the talking. Johnny didn’t mind. He understood that he was Pony’s only outlet for wild fantasies and fears, telling his brothers would only stress them out. With Johnny it was just a confession; nothing more, nothing less.
But Johnny couldn’t bring himself to return the favor. Sure, he told Ponyboy everything he felt he could. There were just some things that he would never understand, some things that only Dallas Winston would understand.
Part of Johnny wished that Dally had stayed in New York. Everything would have been easier if he had just stayed far away, but here he was, standing five feet away under the dim light of a streetlight, sucking on a cancer stick.
“Those are bad for you, ya know?” Johnny said, forcing himself to tear his gaze from the sky and settle it on Dally, who grinned at him. He held the cigarette out in his direction.
“Want a drag?” Dally asked. The quip dragged a small laugh from Johnny. It was soft, almost untraceable. They both knew the answer to that question.
He pushed himself off the car seat and made his way over to Dally, careful to avoid the light. The last thing he wanted was to talk about what happened. Johnny wanted to disconnect from reality a little while longer.
Smoke tickled his throat as it made its way into his lungs. Johnny chose to focus on that instead of the ring of saliva that he fit his mouth over. Some days he would pretend like he was kissing Dally. That it was okay to even consider kissing another guy.
Maybe this was why his parents didn’t love him. Maybe this was why he was always pretending he was anywhere but here.
They passed the cigarette between them for a while in silence. Johnny inched his way closer to Dally, closer to the light. He should have known better, but, in the moment, he couldn’t bring himself to care.
“I don’t get it,” Dally said near the end of the cigarette, allowing Johnny to finish it off before lighting a new one. “Why the hell do you even go back there?”
He spoke like they hadn’t had this conversation a million times before, smushed together in the narrow bed at Buck’s. Johnny wasn’t like Dally. He couldn’t just leave. He felt everything too deeply to do that.
“Johnnycakes, I’m serious this time. Why bother going back? They don’t give a shit.” He paused to inhale another lungful of smoke. His expression was neutral, cold, and uncaring. Dally was a lot like Johnny. He felt everything deeply, only he did a better job at hiding it. “Fuck, Johnny. You don’t deserve to have it so tuff.”
Johnny took the cancer stick from Dally, mulling over his words as he took a drag bigger than he should have. They were his folks, he couldn’t just up and leave, not that Dally would understand. He would have, once upon a time, back when his mother was still around. Now, however, it was like trying to reason with a wall.
The smoke in his lungs burned. Johnny held it in, enjoying the pain in suffocating before succumbing to the coughing fit he had inflicted upon himself.
Dally cast a concerned glance his way but said nothing, just shoved his hands far down in his pockets to hide the fact that his body stiffened with every shaky breath Johnny took. Johnny noticed, he noticed every little detail about Dally. From the bruises on his knuckles to the holes in his shirt.
“Hey, Dal?” He asked in a raspy voice as he moved to pass the cigarette back to Dally. His mind was racing, his chest was constricting. There were so many things he wanted to tell him.
Dally hummed, arching a brow, and grabbing the cancer stick from Jonny.
“I love you.” Johnny cast his eyes downward at the ground, kicking at stray pebbles, and patiently waiting for a response. He was shaking, shivering, call it what you like, but Johnny was scared. More frightened than when his old man burst through the front door after a night of drinking. Maybe it was because this was his little secret, the only thing Johnny had left that Ponyboy didn’t know.
Dally took a puff of his cigarette, watching the smoke float about lazily in the pale-yellow light of the street lamp. “That’s pretty stupid of you,” he said.
Yeah, Johnny agreed. It was pretty stupid.
At that moment the sky opened above them, sending droplets of rain pelting down towards the earth.
“We better get to Buck’s.” Dally said as he extinguished their cigarette and held his hand out to Johnny, which was new. Then again, the grin that had spread across his face was new as well. “You have always been my favorite, Johnnycakes.”
Johnny took his outstretched hand in his own and decided that Dallas Winston was nothing like the moon. He was too incredibly real.