shut the hell

they try to get the kid they used to know back, the one who would angrily correct that hes fourteen and has been for a month, going as far as going to the movies. but ponyboy's just a shell at this point, so he doesn't really care all that much.

Not to mention the actual lyrics.

And don't you ever pay mind to that line in your way that says you'll ruin it

You'll ruin this for everybody, won't you?

Including Bob.

He's out cold for the weeks that Johnny and Pony are on the run, he's drugged and delirious but wakes up just before the rumble. He remembers one of his friends, who was a senior his freshman year, Paul, saying something like "let's do it for Bobby", before passing out again.

When he finally comes to properly it's Randy beside him, of course it is. He reads the paper to him and catches him up on the fights and such. Bob is barely hearing it, the story of the church fire rings in his ears like a sorry afterthought, as he finds himself pressing dangerous fingers against his barely-shut wound.

It's going to scar, he realizes.

Guess I'm not invincible, he realizes.

Randy leaves eventually, and Cherry comes in instead. She starts crying and hugging him and Bob just sort of... aches. He finds himself saying, "Cherry, I think we should break it off. I've never been good to you, have I? I've never been very good to anyone. I think I gotta figure some things out on my own".

Months pass. Randy's changed too, his hair's growing out. He bought a VW bus and moved out of his parents place a year early. He starts talking about trying the music scene out west. Everyone seems to be making it out there.

Bob signs up for the military right after graduation. Disappears for a year. Comes back at Christmas to an empty house. Fuck them, they were never worth the time anyways. He packs his bags for good and starts driving in circles, his blue mustang rattling with a year of disuse.

He finds himself on the wrong side of town. Except it's not, is it? The houses are smaller and the nicotine smells stronger, maybe the road needs repaving, but the kids are still playing out on the street and they're laughing just as innocent as any of them used to.

He finds himself knocking on the Curtis brother's door. It's the only address he knows, the one who used to play football, Darrel, had a party there once. Long time ago. It's none of them who answer the door, though.

It's Dallas Winston. Bob's first thought is that he's dead for real this time and they're never gonna find his body. His second thought is that Dallas looks a lot... gentler than he remembers.

He's bewildered when the blonde lets him inside. "The gang's asleep. Want a beer?"

And it's hilariously true, there's one on the armchair, two on the couch, one on the table, two on the floor. The room smells like liquor and smoke and chocolate cake. A mickey mouse christmas special is playing on the TV and there's a tragedy of a gingerbread house village on the dining room table.

The cookie sits in between them as Dallas pulls out a chair. "I don't know what I'm doing here", Bob admits. "Neither do I", the former hood replies. There's cookie icing in his hair.

"Do they all know I'm sorry?" Bob asks, tentative.

"I don't know. But I'll pass it on", he replies. After a moment, he says "you know, after what you did to Johnny two years ago, I swore that if I ever saw you again, I'd kill you. Then you jumped Pony and Johnny stabbed you and I figured you'd gotten even. But I still wanted to kill you. Turns out it had nothing to do with you. Apparently that's called wanting to protect someone you love. I didn't realize I still had any of that left in me. Say, soc, is there someone you love?"

Bobby thinks back, to Cherry, to Randy, to his parents. Randy, maybe. But- "I don't know".

Dallas nods, real understanding. "Do yourself a favor- find someone you'd kill for, find someone you'd die for. And then live for them instead".

Bob clambers back into his blue mustang with the bottle of beer he'll never drink, not anymore, and peels out of Tulsa doing 90 on the interstate, towards California.

All throughout that fateful night and its many cataclysmic events - the drive in, the lot, the slap, the jumping, the stabbing, running to Dally - there’s the through-line that it’s cold outside and Ponyboy didn’t think to wear a jacket, so he’s walking around freezing in a sleeveless sweatshirt the entire night.

He’s exposed, unprotected, unprepared. He’s in over his head.

He’s a child. He hasn’t mastered the basics of taking care of himself. Forgetting to wear a coat when it’s cold is classic shorthand for “child.” He’s about to go through things that would break an adult, and he’s just a child who can’t even remember to wear a coat when it’s cold outside.

He tries to look tougher than he is, like he doesn’t need protection. He tries to look invincible but he just looks vulnerable; in fact all the more vulnerable for trying so hard to look tough. Everyone tries to tell him that he’s not taking care of himself properly, but he won’t listen.

The way a different character, specifically a different member of his family/his gang, comments on it at every juncture. At each point in the night, at each different location - first Darry at home, then Johnny in the park, then Dally at Buck’s - all comment on Pony’s insufficient outfit. A demonstration of how Ponyboy brings out everyone’s big brother instincts. Everyone speaking as portents of fate, like the three witches in The Scottish Play, prophetically warning the protagonist of cold and “freezing to death” and “pneumonia”: of the looming danger and death and illness and tragedy.

It makes his circumstances that much worse. Sleeping in the lot, running out after Darry slaps him, getting drowned in the fountain, he’s that much colder.

It’s a sweatshirt with the sleeves cut off. It’s a shirt that was made with sleeves, that’s supposed to have sleeves, but doesn’t. They don’t have the things they’re supposed to have. Money. Safety. Parents. Anything they do have is defined by the absence of its complete function. Whatever resources they have are sparse, ripped up, insufficient imitations of what they’re supposed to be.

It’s a background detail of discomfort throughout the whole saga, seemingly mundane but vital. It doesn’t seem as important as almost drowning, but it exacerbates it. The discomfort the hardship of their environment is always an undercurrent of their more dramatic problems.

It’s Darry’s care and lack of care at the same time. Darry scolds Ponyboy for not wearing a coat, but then hits him which is what drives Ponyboy to run out of the house into the cold, but the cold is part of what makes Ponyboy want to go back home despite everything. It’s all the ways Pony needs Darry to take care of him but doesn’t want it; wants it but won’t admit it. It’s all the ways Darry takes care of him, and all the ways he doesn’t. All the ways Darry tries and all the ways he fails.

It’s Soda’s sweatshirt. It’s a hand me down, as is probably the youngest brother’s entire wardrobe. It’s clothing that’s not his, that he’s tried to customize for himself only to have it end up worse, less suited for its intended purpose. It’s a classic greaser piece of clothing - a ripped up DIY hand-me-down - and Ponyboy isn’t quite suited for Soda’s full fledged greaser uniform just as he’s not quite suited for Soda’s full fledged greaser lifestyle.

It paves the way for Dally to give Pony his jacket at the end of the night, but at the same time doesn’t really, because even if Pony was wearing a jacket, even if it kept him warm all night, it would have ended up soaking wet and useless after the fountain. No matter what superficial protection he has - a jacket, a blade, a busted bottle, a companion - he would end up a target by virtue of who he is and the world he lives in.

It’s the first time Pony notices Dally performing an act of kindness that surprises him. It’s the first time Pony notices Dally’s similarities to Darry as Dally takes on a parallel big brother role: “‘you ought to know better than to run away in just a sweat shirt, and a wet one at that. Don't you ever use your head?’ He sounded so much like Darry that I stared at him.” It’s the parallels between Darry and Dally, the two older characters who seem cold and hard because Pony can’t see the good in them just yet.