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Darry considered himself friends with Paul Holden. They went to football practice together, they went out for food afterwards, and they always talked to each other in the hallway between classes. Darry also considered himself as having a good life. He had a group of people to fall back on, he had his brothers and his parents, and he had football. Sure, he wanted more, but he was well on his way to achieving that, and he’d learned by now not to rush that process.
It didn’t matter that he wasn’t like the rest of his teammates, not in the way they really cared about. He was a good player, and everyone treated him as an equal no matter how much he heard them talking behind his back. His team, especially Paul, knew who he was, and they were all okay with it. Even if they weren’t it didn’t matter, because football was going to get Darry Curtis out of Tulsa no matter what his peers really thought of him.
So he ate lunch with them. He went out with them after a win (but never after a lose) to get food and be rowdy. He nodded up at them in the hallways and ignored how they nodded down to him. Because it didn’t matter. They were his friends. And sometimes, being friends with someone meant you had to take certain things on the chin and just keep walking.
-
He’d been assigned a partner project for chemistry, a class he shared with Paul. Needless to say, picking his partner had been an easy choice. What hadn’t been as easy of a choice was inviting Paul over to his house. It was no secret that Darry lived on the East Side, but he doubted most Socs even knew what that looked like when they were so busy with their parties and barbecues. But they’d gone to the Holden house the last three times in a row, and he was getting a little tired of trying to hide his home from someone he knew was a friend.
“Welcome in,” Darry said, pushing open the front door and ignoring the way his friend’s eyes narrowed a little. Paul wouldn’t say anything, so it didn’t matter what he thought. Besides, they went straight to his room to get to work anyway. He tried not to feel embarrassed at the contents of his own residence in comparison to Paul’s, because it really didn’t matter. Both of them knew they were not the same, and they were okay with it.
They’d only been working for around half an hour before Paul’s head perked up.
“You hear that?” he asked. Darry looked up from their work, straining his ears. That was unnecessary though— less than ten seconds later Two-Bit came bursting into the room.
“Heya, Superman!” he called, making himself right at home by sitting on his bed, “I won’t be long, I swear it. I just need a favor . . .”
Darry smiled despite himself. He knew that look. Countless times, Two had asked him to—
“Who’s this, Darrel?” Paul asked. Right! They had never met before.
“Paul, this is Two-Bit Mathews. He lives just down the street. Two, this is—”
Paul snorted a little. Darry froze.
“Two-Bit? That’s really your name?”
Well, that was an easy enough mistake to make. He did have two brothers named Sodapop and Ponyboy, and everyone laughed a little when they learned that. Cool as ever, Two shrugged. “It’s what everyone calls me,” he said, “Pretty sure that makes it a name even if it ain't what my Ma wanted.”
“Do you even know what that means? Oh, glory, this is incredible.”
Two-Bit furrowed his brows, casting a questioning glance at Darry, who shrugged. He had no idea what Paul was on about. He never did half the time.
“You wanna share with the class?” he prompted, hoping to save his friend some embarrassment.
“Nah, your buddy here would know if he picked up a book sometime,” Paul chortled, causing Two to physically recoil. Darry felt a hot, protective anger flare up in his stomach.
“What the hell, Paul? I don’t know what it means either, and you know I read lots,” he protested. There was a layer of meaning under his words that he knew his teammate would pick up on, but he wasn’t sure if that meant he would listen.
“Sorry, man,” he said to Two (though they all knew the apology was far from genuine), “I’m just playin’ around. You know the score.”
“I do,” Two-Bit muttered, a dark storm brewing in his eyes.
-
“It means worthless.”
“What?” Darry looked up. He’d been studying on his bed, so engrossed in his work he hadn’t heard anyone come in.
“It means worthless,” Two repeated, “He was callin’ me worthless.”
His heart broke. “Oh, glory, I’m so sorry . . .”
Two-Bit sighed and pulled out his desk chair, plopping down on it with more weight than he could have.
“I don’t like you hanging around him, Dar. He makes you different. You wouldn’t hesitate to pummel someone if that someone was a Greaser.”
“He didn’t mean nothing, he just . . . he talks to everyone that way. He don’t always realize that . . .”
“That what? That I ain’t his friend? That I ain’t ever gonna leave here an’ he’s gonna go off to college with more money than you or I could dream of? Darry, you ain’t never gonna be like him, and you know it.”
“I ain’t tryna be like him, Two, I swear it—”
“I don’t believe that for a second! Don’t think I ain’t hearin’ the way you speak differently around him, the way you lean away from me an’ the gang in the halls—”
“I just wanna make it out, I swear it, y’all know I don’t think of you that way—”
“We don’t know, Dar!” Two-Bit cried, “You don’t hang around with us anymore! We can’t make heads or tails of what you do!”
He didn’t know what to say to that, but it didn’t matter, because Two wasn’t done.
“What do you let them say about us behind our backs, Darry? What do you say about us?”
“I don’t say nothin’, I swear to God, I really don’t—”
“But you let him treat us that way and he’s still allowed in the house! Do you let him talk to you like that? You do, don’t you? Where did your pride go? We used to be proud of what we were. You used to be Darry. Now I have to shut my mouth and nod when someone calls you Darrel just so I don’t mess up your one shot of getting outta here. Why are you letting someone like him have this much control over you?”
Two-Bit stood up to leave, but before he crossed the threshold, he gave him one last look.
“Is getting out worth all this?”
He shut the door, leaving Darry to sit in the heavy silence of an I don’t know.
This wasn’t right. This wasn’t okay.
Had he lost himself?
-
They’d won again, and just like always he went out with his team to celebrate. They stirred up trouble, admired some ladies, and drove around without a care in the world— most of them did, anyway.
It was almost one in the morning, and all Darry could think about was the way Two’s face dropped when he’d seen him walking with Paul in the hallway. He was right. Darry was trying to be like him. He wanted to go to college and play football. He wanted to get a nice cushy job and settle down with a lady and have more than enough money to get by. He wanted to buy his parents a nice house, one that didn’t have windows that let the rain leak in. He wanted to be successful.
But dammit, Darry also wanted to be good.
“Sorry, boys,” he said, plastering on his signature smile, “I need to bounce. I’ve got some business to attend to.”
Paul whooped as he left. He could've sworn he heard someone shout something like "let's have some real fun!" before he made it out of earshot.
-
Darry had snuck into people’s houses before, just never Two-Bit’s. He’d never had to sneak into Two-Bit's house. He didn't even come here that often since most of the time they were at his place. But he really didn’t want to wake up Two’s Ma or sister, and he knew where his friend’s room was, so . . .
He rapped on the window. Two always had his curtains pulled, but Darry figured he’d be there. He hadn’t heard anything from any of the gang about his plans to go prowling around town with a beer and a smoke. He’d been trying to cut back recently, hadn’t he? It had been a few seconds by now. Should he knock again?
Before he could make that choice, the curtain was pulled back to reveal the person he wanted to see, but he wasn’t in a state Darry would ever want to see him in. Sure, he was used to the whole half-asleep, sorta drunk thing— but underneath all that, Two-Bit looked sad. He felt a pang of guilt. He knew he had caused that.
Without a second thought, Two pushed open the window. Darry stared at him, suddenly feeling surprisingly unsure of himself in a way he’d only really felt during his first few days of high school.
“Are you just gonna stand there?” The question lacked its usual lilt. It wasn’t a joke.
Darry had to fix this.
“A Soc wouldn’t care to pick up a penny off the street no matter how pretty it was. That doesn’t mean findin’ a penny on my way back from practice wouldn’t make my day a hundred times better. Two bits don’t mean nothin’ to them because they don’t need it to. But I’d rather have a couple nice coins to my name, you dig?” God, he was already rambling. This was bad.
Two-Bit’s eyes crinkled at the corners.
“That might be the most insane thing I’ve ever heard you say.”
“Yeah, it don’t really make much sense out loud, but as long as you’re pickin’ up what I’m puttin’ down . . . a penny means more to a Greaser than it ever could to someone like him,” he said slowly, “And I’ve found that Paul don’t know much about the true worth of things anyway.”
“Does this mean you’re gonna stop hanging around him?” The glimmer of hope in Two-Bit’s eyes made Darry’s heart hurt.
“I can’t. He’s my teammate.”
“But he can just be your teammate, right? Someone like that . . . he don’t deserve to be your friend, man.”
Darry sighed.
“I know,” he said, “I just can’t help it.”
Two nodded solemnly, but he looked like he had more to say. For a few seconds, Darry waited in silence.
“You’re not gonna stop hangin’ around us because of him, right?” Two-Bit’s voice was smaller than he’d ever heard it— he never wanted to hear it that way again.
“No. No, never. Y’all are more than friends to me. Paul can never be my brother, not like you and the gang are. I swear I’ll never leave my brothers behind.”
Friends were something situational. Tim Shepherd was a friend, but that didn’t mean Darry liked him. Paul was a friend just like the whole football team was his friend. The word was meaningless. But brother— Paul wasn’t anything close to that. A brother was someone who stayed with you through thick and thin, someone who didn’t have any judgement to hide when they saw the holes in your clothes or the patches on your backpack. Two-Bit wasn’t a friend to Darry, he was a brother.
“I’m sorry,” he said, looking at his thumbs pressing into each other, “I’m sorry I made you feel like that. I’m just so caught up in everything . . . sometimes I forget what’s really important, I guess.”
“That’s why we’re here to remind you, right?”
Darry smiled.
“Yeah. That’s right.”