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“Who is this?” says the voice on the phone.
“Steve,” he says. He whistles on the S. Ugh. “May I uh…may I speak to Evie, please?”
“Steve who? Do you have any idea how late it is, kid?” says the voice. It’s low, so it must be one of Mrs. Peterson’s rolodex of boyfriends.
“Just put her on the line, please. Please,” Steve begs.
“No, you need to call her back at a better time.”
“No, please, man- sir- please, I’ll be fast. I just really need to speak to her.”
There’s a sound of fumbling, a muttered swear, and a distant “I give up” on the other end of the line, and then Evie’s voice is there.
“Steve?” she says, and her voice is cool. “How was the rumble?”
Steve winces, leaning back into the Curtises’ couch.
The rumble. It feels like years ago that he was cheering about winning the rumble. It feels like years since he gave a damn about the rumble, since the Socs mattered. It feels like decades since two days ago, when Evie tossed his momma’s ring at the wall and told him not to come crying to her when the rumble ended up killin’ him.
“Steve?” she says, the ice in her voice melting just a shade into worriedness.
“Johnny’s dead,” he croaks. Evie gasps very faintly. “And uh…Dallas couldn't take it…” Steve trails off, because there’s hot tears in his eyes again. God, his eyes are already so swollen and sore from crying. He’s shocked he has any water left in him.
“Dallas…” Evie repeats.
“Yeah, he uh…” Steve rubs his eyes. “He’s gone. They’re both gone.”
“Steve, I- I’m so sorry.”
“Can I come over?” he whispers, wishing he was comfortable on the couch, wishing he didn’t have to ask for help, wishing he hadn’t made Evie mad the other day, wishing she wasn’t right.
“Of course.”
“Thanks,” he breathes, and hangs up the phone.
He stares at the ceiling for a minute, and then the door to Soda’s room, and then at his ratty tennis shoes.
He tugs on the chuck taylors slowly, because his hands feel like lead. Everything feels like lead. Steve doesn’t remember the last time he ever felt this heavy. Somehow he manages to trudge outside to his car, and he sits there, holding her wheel for a second, noting the way the bumps on the back fit his fingers, just to feel something solid in his hands.
Evie’s place isn’t too far from the Curtises’, just a few miles down the road. Some bluesman croons on the radio, along to a twanging harmonica. A cop car is parked by the old oak tree, and for once, Steve slows to the speed limit, a picture in his head of blue and red lights and gunshots racing through the air. The thought makes his stomach twist violently, and he cuts off his thoughts before they get to Dallas. They get to Dallas anyway. Falling on the pavement, crumpling like a soldier on the battlefield.
Except there was no fight to be fought, no war to be won.
“No!” Steve had screamed.
“He’s just a kid!” Two-Bit yelled.
Steve fell forward then, and he hazily remembers Soda catching him, holding him. He threw his hands up in the air, convinced for a second the bullets were still coming- the cops still had the guns out, it’d be so easy to pull the triggers-
But they didn’t.
It was over, and Dallas Winston was on the ground, dead.
Steve’s not crying anymore, not really. It’s been over an hour. But the occasional tear escapes, and his nose is running like a river. He sniffles, and the snot gets caught in his throat. He can’t expand his lungs enough to get it out without his rib screaming in pain.
Damn Socs, he thinks, but it doesn’t spark the same anger in him anymore. He just doesn’t have it in him.
He parks the car a block down from Evie’s place, because her mother doesn’t like when he comes over this late, and drags his feet up the sidewalk. He turns into her side yard, stumbles past the cellar, and hops onto an overturned bin to better reach the window into her bedroom. It glows warm with gold lamp-light, and there’s a little flickering candle on the sill.
Steve knocks on the glass.
Evie draws the curtains back and hoists the window open. Her hair is tied back in a pair of braids, and she’s wearing a white nightgown like a girl in a movie.
“Evie?” he murmurs, and she cups his face in her hands.
“You got a few shiners, huh?” she says gently.
He shrugs. He forgot about those. She runs her hands through his hair, even though it’s greasy and messy and he hasn’t washed out the Vaseline that held it in place all nice earlier today.
“Come on in,” Evie says, her brown eyes soft.
“Okay,” he mumbles, and hoists his body and then his knees up onto the wide sill. From there, he lets his body go limp as he falls onto her bed, feeling like a ragdoll.
His rib feels like it’s cracking even more from that pathetic exertion. He hugs his chest and groans.
“Soda patched ya up?” Evie hums, tracing a bandage wrapped around his knuckles.
Steve nods.
“You wanna talk about…everything?” she asks, lying down next to him on top of the sheets.
He almost does, but he remembers his tooth and shakes his head.
“Okay,” she says, snaking her arm under his shoulders. Despite the pain in his chest, Steve rolls onto his side and hugs her tight.
With his face buried in her shoulder, he says “I love you.” He’s said it before, but he doesn’t think he’s ever meant it quite like this. But now he means it with everything he’s got.
She holds him close, kissing the top of his head. “I know,” she says, a slight teasing in her voice. He chuckles, because he’s so beat that everything is funny.
“Honest,” he whispers. “Honest to God.” He doesn’t know how else to say it, that she’s the one thing tethering him to the world right now. That she’s the only thing who feels real.
“I know,” she says. She pulls back to look at his face. “I love you too, Stevie. I’m glad you came here.”
For the millionth time tonight, Steve’s eyes get wet. Evie wipes the tears away, murmuring things like “It’s okay,” “It’s over now,” and “I’ve got you.”
Steve wimpers, thinking about Dallas, who wasn’t even eighteen yet. Thinking about Johnny, who he never did visit at the hospital. Thinking about how Johnny was wearing Steve’s old hand-me-down jacket as he burned in the old church.
It’s ridiculous, but that’s what really gets him sobbing. Picturing that old jacket, with no one left to wear it now. The collar that would never be turned up how both he and Johnny liked it ever again.
And Dally, Dally’s Saint Christopher pendant, the one he used to give to Evie’s friend Sylvia- what, is it just supposed to sit there in the confiscated evidence? Steve vows to steal it back. Dallas wouldn’t want it goin’ to the pigs…
He keeps playing the past week over and over in his head, wishing he’d done something.
He wishes he’d gone with Dal to that town yesterday. He woulda seen the burning building, and he’d have put his pedal to the metal and shot outta there. Ponyboy woulda never been able to jump out and save the kids, and Johnny wouldn’t have broken his back and burned, and Dally wouldn’t have snapped. Sure some kids mighta died, but Lord, kids died either way- but if Steve had been there, at least those kids wouldn't’ve been Johnny or Dally…
But no. Dallas never told him about the country, never told him about the hideout. Steve couldn’t have been there yesterday. He couldn’t have.
So instead he wishes that Two-Bit had stuck with Ponyboy and Johnny that night last week, kept Ponyboy safe from the Socs. …No, Steve wishes he’d let Pony-kid come along on his double date with Evie, Soda, and Sandy. Suddenly Ponyboy’s presence sounds like no big deal. Hell, Steve would let the kid come along on every double date ever for the rest of time if it only meant Johnny and Dallas weren’t bein’ shipped to the morgue right now, measured and packed into wooden boxes…
Steve shudders, sobbing and shaking, wishing over and over that he could undo the whole week. Start again, start fresh.
He wishes he could wake up, and find himself back on that afternoon, the day Ponyboy got jumped. He’d fix everything, he would. Somehow.
Ponyboy would never get jumped, Johnny would never stab anyone. And while he’s dreaming, Steve makes it so Sandy never leaves Soda. No, he makes it so they never dated to begin with. So Soda’s heart never breaks. So Soda never shows up in Steve’s room, crying and crying and crying, looking broken beyond repair. And if there isn’t a rumble, Steve doesn’t argue about it with Evie, either, and she still has his ring around her finger, and everything is okay again.
Steve cries, wishing he were younger, wishing he could fix it, and most of all wishing he could close his eyes and open them to a movie house. Ponyboy would be there, like he was that day, and Steve would tell him he could come along. Anything to keep him from that drive in. Anything to keep him from pissing off the wrong Soc.
And then he’d be here tonight with Evie, kissing her and listening to Elvis. He’d be resting easy, knowing Johnny’s at Two-Bit’s house and Dally’s at the bar. Knowing Soda’s not heartbroken and Ponyboy isn’t sick. Knowing Soda isn’t gonna get whisked away to a boys’ home, far away from Tulsa…
Evie holds him steady, running her hand through his greasy, blood-mud-and-Vaseline-matted hair.
“D’ya mind if I use the shower?” he mumbles finally, once he’s slowed shaking.
“Course not,” she says, hot breath in his ear. “Ya need one,” she teases, pulling away to look at his face. He grins on instinct. Evie’s eyes widen.
“...What?” he says, wiping his watery eyes on the back of his hand.
“You’ve got a hole in your mouth, Stevie!” she says, grabbing his chin to look at the missing tooth.
He exhales through his nose, but bares his teeth so she can see ‘em. “I reckon it’ll make me look tough,” he says defensively.
“D’ya have the tooth on ya still?!”
Steve squeaks in surprise as Evie sticks her fingertip into the space where his front tooth used to be. “Hey!”
“Sorry,” she says, sitting up and flicking on the lamp. “Now c’mon, d’ya have it?” she demands.
“Shoot, s’okay, just took me by surprise,” Steve grumbles, prodding the empty space himself. “I got it here, see?” he says, taking his front tooth outta his pocket. It had actually fallen out after the rumble, when he bit into a piece of cake…and then looked down to see his tooth still lodged into the ice-hardened chocolate frosting. He scowls. He’s pretty sure he knows which punch loosened it, too.
Evie cringes. “Oh…Steve…”
“I know,” he mumbles, catching sight of where she left his ring on the windowsill. “I know.”
Sighing, she holds a hand out, and hesitantly, he hands her the tooth.
“C’mon,” she says, taking his tooth in one hand and his arm in the other. She kicks the door open and glances down the hall, and seeming to decide it’s clear, she leads him out and into the bathroom.
In the bright light of the bathroom, Steve’s reflection looks even lousier than he feels- which is saying a lot, ‘cos he feels like he’s been beat half to death. His eyes and cheeks are red and puffy, which sure ain’t his best look. It makes sense though- closing his eyes feels funny, no surprise they look like that. His hair is flat on one side and sticks up on the other, and the grease has loosened, so it sticks out too far on the sides and makes his face look too wide. There’s blood and mud and tears streaking down his face, and he can’t tell where the shiners end and grime begins. His tank top is stained and torn, his vest is caked with mud, and the crown jewel of it all is his damn missing tooth. He thought his teeth were bad before, but glory, he’d rather have a crooked tooth than no tooth at all.
He doesn’t look tough, cool, or hoodish.
He looks like a little kid.
Steve scowls and sits down on the toilet lid so he doesn’t have to face his reflection.
Evie looks so perfect, especially by comparison. Her skin’s almost clear, and so soft looking, and the hair that isn’t braided falls ‘round her face in perfect dark curly ringlets. Her nightgown is clean and white, except now there’s stains where she held him. The shoulder he cried into is especially bad, with dark mud and wet tears on the once-nice lace. Great, so now Steve’s ruined Evie’s clothes too along with his face.
Evie doesn’t seem to notice though- she’s focused on rinsing off the tooth in the sink.
“C’mere,” she says, once she’s decided it’s clean. “Look at me.” He does. “Good,” she says. “Now you gonna try to put it back in, okay?”
“Yer-what?!” Steve says, eyebrows flying to his forehead.
“Sometimes they can go back in. I saw my ma do it at the emergency room once. I reckon it’s been too long, but I figure we oughta try, at least.”
“Okay,” Steve says, going to grab the tooth.
“No, not there, that’s the sensitive part, that’s the root- I don’t think you’re meant to grab it there?” Evie says, unsurely. “Oh- maybe I oughta wake up Ma…” she murmurs, chewing her lip.
A jolt of fear and disdain shoots through Steve. If Evie wakes up her Ma, it’s likely to be the breaking point for Mrs. Peterson’s hesitantly allowing him to date her daughter.
“No!” he says quickly. “No, that’s alright, just do what ya think ya should.”
Evie nods reluctantly, and hands Steve the tooth by the bottom.
“Oh-kay,” he breathes, hyping himself up for it. “Here goes nothin’.” He takes a sharp breath, lines up the tooth, and jams it into the socket.
It’s like sticking a knife into his gum, and the pain shoots through his mouth and into his head like an electric shock. He yelps involuntarily. “Oh!”
“Shh!” Evie hisses, glancing towards her ma’s room in a panic. “Oh damn- are you okay?!” she whispers, whirling back to face him.
“Yeah,” he grits out, holding his tooth in place with a finger. “You got any as-thpirin?”
“I reckon,” Evie nods, the panic in her face giving way to sympathy. She opens the medicine cupboard and hands him the aspirin, and then she rubs his shoulders and plants a kiss on the top of his head.
“So do I jus-th…leave it?” he says, lisping around the mess in his mouth.
“Ma had the kid at the ER bite down on some fabric so it gets pressed back into place.”
Steve cringes. His head’s already pounding, and the thought of more pressure…ugh. But Evie hands him a little bit of bandaging wrap, and he bites down hard.
“Now leave that in your mouth, and pray to God it takes,” Evie says, patting his face. She sizes him up. “Next order of business- shower.”
Steve nods, and goes to shrug off his vest- but oh! His broken rib screams in protest. “Augh…” he manages to groan, curling around his midsection.
“Shh, don’t stop biting,” Evie orders, not unkindly. She rises and tugs his vest off one arm at a time, and she tosses it on the tiled floor in the corner of the bathroom.
He butts his head into her side affectionately. She chuckles and ruffles his hair.
“Is it cool if I get your undershirt too?” she says, and he nods confirmation, although this isn’t exactly the circumstance he’d imagined his first time stripping for her in.
She peels off the tank, and disappointingly, she doesn’t take much time eyeing his chest. She’s probably scared he’s uncomfortable. Man, he’s dying to spit out the fabric so he can ask if she likes what she sees.
Then he remembers why he’s here and wants to kick himself- how can he be thinking about flirting at a time like this?
Steve stands up and unbuttons his jeans, staring hard at the wall, trying not to feel awkward in front of Evie. She's gone all the way with guys before, but he’s never been so…exposed in front of anyone who isn’t Sodapop- he can’t help but worry she’ll be disappointed. He’s proud of his arms, sure, but everything below his pecs is…a Wild West that his feelings change towards on the daily. He just prays Evie finds it easier to form an opinion.
“Thi-sth ain’t quite how I thought thi-sth’d go,” he tries to joke around the gauze, keeping his eyes trained on the wall as he tosses his jeans into the pile of clothes on the ground.
Evie chuckles. “Me neither. And quit talking, you gotta let your tooth set, babe.”
He nods, face flushing.
“Don’t worry,” she says, leaning over his shoulder to whisper in his ear, “next time I see ya like this we’ll have a helluva lot more fun, okay?”
He bites back a smile, and turns around to kiss her cheek as best as he can around the bandaging in his mouth.
Evie smiles and squeezes his shoulder, and then retreats to the door. “You get cleaned up, I’ll find ya a change of clothes.”
“Okay,” he murmurs. Once she’s shut the door, he clambers into the shower.
In the shower, he cries again, ‘cos he keeps thinking about how Dally was supposed to be racing next week. Steve, Soda, and Johnny had planned to watch it about a month ago…Soda with Sandy, and Johnny with Steve’s cousin Phoebe, who was supposed to come down to visit… Steve cringes. He’s gonna have to call her and tell her not to come down from Kansas- he’s just not in the mood to host while planning his buddies’ funeral arrangements.
He wants to go kill that Soc, Bob Sheldon.
But he can’t even do that. The damn fucker’s already dead. In his frustration, Steve turns the water temperature up so hot it burns, just so he has something else to focus on. When that gets too painful, he turns the heat completely off so that he’s cold. Maybe if he thinks hard about the cold water and the way his teeth want to chatter, he can be mad at that instead.
Numbly, Steve washes his hair with Evie’s floral-scented shampoo, and tries to pretend the tears streaming down his face are just water from the shower head.
After about ten minutes, he hears Evie come back in.
“I gotcha a towel,” she says, so he figures he oughta come out. He flicks the water off, and pokes his head out the curtain.
“You okay?” she frowns. She touches his cheek. “Glory, you’re cold! Why’re you cold?!”
He shrugs, and takes the towel, ducking back behind the curtain to dry off and wrap it around his waist.
Back in Evie’s room, she hands him a too-big football jersey, white boxers, and a pair of jeans that are cut off a few inches above the knees. He figures they probably used to be her dad’s, as they smell dusty like they haven’t been used in years- which is how long it’s been since he died in Korea.
The clothes hang off Steve’s frame loosely- Mr. Peterson was a much bigger man than Steve is. They’re warm though, especially compared to the ice shower he just subjected himself to.
“I called the dentist, but they ain’t pickin’ up. I reckon we oughta take ya in tomorrow,” Evie says, falling back onto her bed. She’s changed out of her white nightgown and into a shorter yellow one, and Steve tries not to stare because it really really isn’t the time or place for that.
“You gonna be able to afford it?” She asks, voice quiet.
Steve shrugs. Hell if he knows. “How much does it co-stht?” He says, scowling at the damn lisp.
Evie shrugs helplessly. “Probably a hundred-fifty if they can’t save the tooth and needa give ya a new one, which they probably will since it’s been so long since ya lost it…but Jesus, I dunno, I stopped volunteerin’ there ages ago.”
Steve huffs, wrinkling his nose. He probably has a total of one hundred in his bank account. The ol’ man has a lot more, but Steve doesn’t wanna explain it to him…
He sighs and falls onto the bed next to Evie. He wonders about Johnny’s hospital bills. Do you still have to pay those if you’re dead? Will the Cades still have to pay them even though the doctors failed and Johnny’s gone?
Steve closes his eyes and tries to focus on breathing in and out instead of the empty feelings inside.
“I called Sylvia too,” Evie murmurs, voice breaking just enough for Steve to catch it. “She’s stayin’ at Buck’s tonight, told me she’d let him know about Dallas…” Evie trails off, getting choked up. “She cried, Stevie. God, I don’t ever remember hearin’ her cry. Mind, she was tryin’ not to, and I reckon she thought I couldn’t tell, but her voice was waverin’ somethin’ awful, and she started sobbin’ after I said good-bye but before I fully hung up…” Evie rubs her eyes. “Lordy, I ain’t never heard her cryin’ before.”
“Thought she was two-timin’ him,” Steve murmured.
“Well, she thought he’d quit gettin’ sent to the cooler,” Evie shoots back, and Steve frowns, but doesn’t argue. He feels like that’s different, but he’s not in the mood to argue with Evie right after she’s let him off the hook for their previous argument.
“I just…I can’t get my head ‘round it,” Steve whispers. “I can’t believe they’re gone.”
“I can,” Evie whispers. “Not Johnny. But Dallas.”
Steve half-laughs bitterly. “I guess we knew he was gonna go out in a blaze of glory, but still…now that he has, it don’t feel…real.”
“No…I suppose it don’t,” Evie agrees.
“They were just kids, Evie,” Steve murmurs, screwing his eyes shut.
“Glory, we’re all just kids,” Evie sighs, wrapping her arms around him. He hugs her back and buries his face in her shoulder again.
It isn’t fair. None of it is fair.
The next morning when Steve wakes up, there’s still a hole in his mouth, and an even bigger hole in his heart. But it’ll be smaller someday, maybe.
“Mornin’,” Evie says, yawning next to him, her hair a mess from sleep. God, she’s the best girl a guy could have.
“Hey,” he says, grabbing her hand under the sheets. She smiles and squeezes it.
Evie’s got his ring on her finger again.