olli!!

"no, no. my best friend, johnny, his dad was a big drunk. so he hated all that stuff. parties too."

"and where is johnny tonight?"

Steve, who was one of the first on scene, running to beat the life out of the socs who jumped Ponyboy, breaking his nose in the process.

Steve, who wants to keep Ponyboy from trouble, as he and Sodapop do reckless things & doesn't want to bring the youngest, vulnerable, and impressionable kid with them to do something like drag racing.

Steve, who is there as soon as Ponyboy comes home.

Steve, despite breaking 3 ribs, immediately looking to the door upon Ponyboy's return.

Steve, who watched in horror as Ponyboy broke that bottle and handled a group of socs on his own because he was scared of Ponyboy, the sweetest greaser, being like him.

Steve never hated Ponyboy, he just couldn't show Ponyboy that he cared. — Steve's character is one that I hold dear, as though his anger speaks volumes his actions speak miles. And though he doesn't have a role in the movie, his role in the book allows Ponyboy to sympathize with Randy.

Sodapop and Steve's friendship is a parallel to Randy and Bob, and without that relationship in the book, Ponyboy wouldn't have related to Randy's perspective.

People glance at Steve's character and only see him as a flat dynamic, however his character has more depth and personality than that, it's just we as the reader are in the same perspective as Pony. His depiction in both the movie and musical, though playing small roles, lets us observe the dynamic between Ponyboy and Steve throughout the book, and we observe Steve genuinely caring for the others in the story in his own way.

"When you're small and scared but there are others who are smaller and more scared" but it's a now 20 year old darry calling everyone in the neighborhood asking them if they've seen pony because he didn't come home after his movie was over, with darry trying to keep his voice steady over the phone as to not freak out soda.

"When you're small and scared but there are others who are smaller and more scared" but it was that grueling week that pony ran away to windrixville when darry would stay up until 2, 3, sometimes 4 o'clock in the morning trying to opt between getting enough sleep to perform at least halfway decent at work, and comforting soda who he was pretty sure hated him now for making their baby brother run away, but clung onto darry anyway because they were all that they had, the sobs that wracked soda's body being interrupted every few minutes when the wind blew against the house just right and made it creak and simultaneously made both boys look up expecting to see pony because maybe he had come in through the backdoor or even a window when they weren't looking.

"When you're small and scared but there are others who are smaller and more scared" but it's darry watching pony dissociate after losing two of his best friends the same way that darry dissociated after learning about what happened to their parents and not being able to do anything about it because he never had another adult around to teach him how to properly process grief.

"When you're small and scared but there are others who are smaller and more scared" but it's darry listening to soda break down in the park and realizing that you can live under the same roof as someone for your entire life and still feel a million miles away from them. How could he say that he loved soda if he didn't even know a thing about him? Did soda know darry loved him, or did he harbor feelings of being unwanted the same way that he harbored the grief of losing sandy, mickey mouse, and their parents because smiling and staying out of the way prevented argument?

a bunch of children getting tangled up in the mistakes their parents made and the history of people they never knew, all of which is connected in ways they’ll never understand and no one seems willing to explain

skip if you dont think you can handle it, and please, please take care of yourselves! love ya!!

he always kept neil alive. he felt it was his job. he had to be the one to save neil from himself.

and then todd came. and neil was happy and hadn’t been having those thoughts. he missed rhe signs of it being a manic episode. he thought maybe neil was finally just happy.

so he stopped watching so closely. he trusted neil.

then the night of the play happened. he was woken up from a deep sleep by dr. hager who told him he had a call waiting for him.

his ears rang as his mother told him what happened. what neil had done to himself. he sits on the floor and asks the one question he doesn’t want to know the answer to. “what did his arms look like?”

he throws up when he gets the answer. the answer he knew was coming but still couldn’t handle.

dr. hager tells him to go to the school nurse. charlie walks there on autopilot, his brain completely separate from his body.

as he lays in one of the uncomfortable infirmary beds, he keeps thinking about how he’d failed neil. he shouldn’t have trusted him. he should’ve noticed the signs.

but neil always was a good actor.