#chippedshake

Ponyboy looks up at Darry. “You know that writing contest Mrs Anderson was gonna sign me up for?” Darry nods slowly, looking down at the letter and back up at Pony again. “Got the prompt.”

Darry stares at him for a moment as if in expectation before asking, “What is it?”

Ponyboy doesn’t respond, he just grabs the ripped envelope and takes out the folded piece of paper, holding it out to Darry between two fingers. Darry dries his hand on his pants and takes it. 

He fumbles with the piece of paper for a moment, trying to unfold it with just one hand, and his brow furrows as he reads through the prompt. “What’s wrong with it?”

Ponyboy sighs, forever uncomprehended by his environment, and snatches the paper back. He doesn’t really know what to do with it, though, so he throws it onto the table again — not quite as energetically this time — and goes to slump down on the couch. 

“I’m fifteen. How’m I s’pposed to write about ‘being in love’?” He asks, saying the last couple words in a mocking tone. 

“Hang on now, I ain’t seen nothin’ ‘bout being in love.”

Ponyboy squints up at him in a way that distinctly says ‘are you stupid?’ “Did ya even read the prompt?”

“Yeah. Says to write about love. Ain’t nothin’ ‘bout being in love. You can write about Pepsi if you wanna.”

Ponyboy looks up at him, then down again. A couple silent moments go by before he asks, “The drink or the brother?”

Darry makes a sound between a snort and a laugh. “I meant the drink, but I reckon they’ll like it more if ya write about your brother.” 

“Huh.” Ponyboy looks away from Darry and starts staring into nothingness, deep in thought. 

“What’s wrong?”

“I wanted to be annoyed and I’m not allowed to so now it’s sorta between annoyed and nothing and the feeling is annoying me.”

Darry hums, mildly amused.

“Is this like college essays where you just gotta compete for the saddest sob story? ‘Cause I think I win if it’s that.”

Darry looks down at him, confused. “Who told you that?”

Ponyboy blinks at him. “You did. When you applied for college. You said ‘I hope somethin’ terrible happens to you in the next six years and you’ll be a lucky son of a bitch if it does.’” He goes quiet for a moment. “Then Ma told you to watch your mouth around her.”

“Oh.” Darry blinks. “I don’t remember that.”

Two years ago, when police officers appeared on their doorstep to ask Darry to identify the bodies and the bathroom tiles were cold under his knees and the bile was burning his throat and Johnny’s hand was warm on his back, thumb rubbing back and forth, Ponyboy’s mind was blank. A couple minutes later, though, when he leaned his head on Johnny’s chest with a couple half-hearted coughs, the only thing he could think of was that at least he would have a great college essay. 

Johnny didn’t really know what to do when he dissolved into hysterical laughter. 

Ponyboy shrugs like it’s not a big deal. “I do.”

“Yeah.” Neither of them says anything for a couple moments. “I’ve never written for a contest or anything, so I don’t know what they want. Just writing good should be enough, prolly.”

“Yeah.”

The room falls into silence for a while. 

“I better get started on dinner. Try and get your homework over with before Soda gets home, alright? I know you get distracted with him.”

“Okay.”

Darry goes into the kitchen and Ponyboy picks up his backpack and goes into his room. He has to finish some math exercises for tomorrow, and Darry will get mad if he asks him to look them over too late at night, but he gives himself a couple minutes to look over the prompt one last time. 

Love is a central part of human existence, something near every writer touches in their work. From Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet to Lord Byron’s “She walks in beauty like the night” to Greek myths such as Sophocles’s Antigone. It’s been written and sung and painted about from every perspective — except yours. 

The 1966 edition of American Young Artists’s yearly writing competition asks you to write a short story (no longer than 8,000 words) or poem (no longer than 50 lines) about what love means to you. 

Please do not: 

Submit an essay or straightforward answer. While undoubtedly interesting, the objective of this contest is to explore your creative prowess and ability to transmit messages and themes through subtext. 

Submit more than one piece. You will be disqualified and none of your pieces will be considered. 

Rewrite a story that has already been written. We are not interested in why you believe Orpheus turned back or how Romeo and Juliet would have lived in another world. The story or poem you submit must be entirely original, not based on someone else’s work. 

There are a couple more points, but Ponyboy stops reading. He doesn’t know where to start. 

He doesn’t even know if he’s felt love before. No one ever bothers to give you a straightforward answer to what it is, only hints here and there that you’re supposed to put together so you get the same definition as everyone else. 

Tall tales of butterflies and blushing and stumbling over words. Of holding hands and staring into each other’s eyes and feeling connected. Of being willing to risk your life for someone (did he love the kids in that church?), of wanting the best for them (shouldn’t he want that for everyone?), and putting them before yourself. 

Ponyboy groans again and buries his face in his pillow. 

He takes the math homework out of his backpack and gets a pencil. 

A minute later he gets up and opens the door, yelling on the way to the kitchen so Darry can hear him over the sound of whatever he’s cooking, “Darry! Is cosine the adjacent or opposite side?”

…

Ponyboy might have school friends, but none of them can hold a candle to Johnny. 

They’re fine for grouping up for projects or sitting together at lunch, but he wouldn’t spend hours next to them in silence, reading or drawing or just thinking. He wouldn’t invite them home and sit down on his bedroom floor next to them, just enjoying each other’s presence. Letting them flip through his sketchbook would leave him anxiously looking over their shoulder and watching their face, trying to gauge their reactions. 

Which means that now he spends an awful amount of time alone in his room. He doesn’t usually mind, but now the stupid prompt seems to be glaring at him, screaming that he should be working on it. 

Mrs Anderson won’t ask him to have something written until at least a month from now, but it still torments him. He finds himself zoning out in the middle of a drawing, wondering about whether love can really be considered a feeling or if it’s actually something else. Answering some questions for science class is interrupted by three attempts at starting to write something about his parents, but all of them sound cheesy. 

Finally, when Soda asks him if he’s okay because he doesn’t seem to be completely there, he decides to just get it over with and excuses himself from the dinner table. 

Ponyboy sets up the typewriter, grabs the stupid, stupid prompt from his bed and reads it through. 

He skims through the rest of things not to do — most of them fairly obvious — and reaches a small bit at the end. 

If you’re not sure where to start with this prompt, you can try exploring some of the more common literary topics relating to love. We’ve included a list of some of the most common ones: 

Love as a home, someone safe, where outside troubles can’t reach you. 

Home isn’t home anymore, not without Ponyboy around. It wasn’t home before, anyways, not with the constant simmering tension, the knowledge that Darry and Ponyboy could start at it at any moment. Living over a ticking time bomb, not knowing how much time was left, waiting for the seconds hand to tick for the last time. 

And now every room is riddled with landmines. A single misstep can set them off, saying the wrong word at the wrong time — Soda can’t take it anymore. He loves his brothers, he really does, but he can’t let the tension seep through his skin and into his veins.

He’s started to spend less time at home. It started slowly, a couple months ago, but now that Ponyboy’s gone, he hardly spends any time there at all. 

Money’s tight as always, and he takes all the shifts he can. Steve hangs around even when he’s not working, and, honestly, Soda kinda prefers being at the DX over being at home. 

Sure, he needs to talk to the occasional customer and put on a fake smile, but the customer doesn’t know him inside and out. They don’t know all his tells and they don’t know that he lost Mom’s pot pie recipe and they don’t know his brothers hate each other. All they know is that they want a candy bar or they need their car fixed. 

And then they’re gone. 

And whether or not Soda sold the routine, whether or not they know he was faking it, whether or not they think there’s something wrong with him, none of it matters, because they’re never going to see him again. They walk out that door and he’ll never talk to them for the rest of his life. 

It’s a breath of fresh air to be able to exist without the constant pressure of holding them all together. 

And then there’s Steve. 

Steve, who sits on the counter while he does his book reports. Who pretends to hate Ponyboy so he won’t go out with them when Soda needs to decompress without his brothers around. Who somehow always knows when he’s worried about his brothers fighting or how disinterested Sandy’s been recently, and starts telling him some crazy, probably made up story. 

You get this wrinkle between your eyebrows, Steve told him once, Shows you’re worried ‘bout somethin’. 

Sometimes Soda wishes he could come home to Steve, instead of Darry and Ponyboy, go out with him instead of Sandy.

Then he realises what he just thought and a wave crashes down on him, a wave of ungrateful and don’t care about them and queer. 

2. Venatus amoris. Being loved as something to hunt, to be achieved. 

You don’t become Boy of the Year without picking up a few tricks on how to be well-liked. 

If Darry wants someone to like him, he’ll get them to like him. He’s got it down to a science at this point. 

Now, love, that’s a trickier bit. He’s not all that sure how to get that. But for now, being liked is enough. 

He’s learned how to smile and avoid dangerous questions. He’s learned how to hide the parts of himself that other people don’t like — the part of him that can’t lose and goes to the bathroom after a bad game because he can’t break linoleum the way he can break drywall. The part of him that doesn’t understand what people want when they talk to him and goes over every interaction when he’s trying to fall asleep. The part of him that feels things as strongly as his little brothers do. 

People like a pretty shell, they don’t like a messy, feeling person.

The doors in the Curtis household don’t have locks, though, and the walls are thin. So when he punches the bathroom wall after losing because stupid fucking Mark couldn’t run fast enough, the whole house can hear him. He can’t turn on the shower to drown out when he’s crying because they have one bathroom in the house, and you better believe Ponyboy and Sodapop will barge in if they need to. 

There’s no hiding, no covering himself in a shell.   

Which is fine, until this fifteen-year-old kid shows up with Soda one day, claiming to come from New York. Darry doesn’t mind if his brothers and their best friends know that he’s a sore loser, but he’ll be damned if this asshole knows a thing about him. Dallas Winston is still a stranger, even if he’s a teenage hood, and it means that Darry’s walls come up. 

Which is. Exhausting.

Dallas seems to be everywhere. He’s latched onto Johnny, and Johnny’s always with Ponyboy, so there’s no escape. 

And he isn’t falling for Darry’s usual tricks. He scowls at Darry’s forced smiles and scoffs at the questions he asks without caring. Either he doesn’t notice social cues, or doesn’t care about them. Whichever it is, he doesn’t bother to hide that he doesn’t like Darry, and seems to get a rise out of getting him to try and prove himself. 

Which finally pushes Darry over the edge. Why should he give a fuck what anyone thinks about him? Being well-liked only got him so-called friends that forgot him as soon as they threw their caps into the air. 

So what if Dallas Winston doesn’t like him? So what if he thinks he’s a weakling? So what if those years didn’t mean shit to Paul and Mark and Noah? 

Who gives a fuck? Darry definitely doesn’t. 

“What’s your fucking problem with me?” It comes out scathing. 

And Dallas Winston has the fucking gall to look him up and down judgementally and smirk impassively. You’re in my house you asshole. “You ever told me anything that wasn’t a lie?”

Out with the forced smiles, out with the meaningless questions, out with the closed doors. 

You wanted the real me? Here he fucking is. In all his glorious colours. 

So he snaps and he stares and he doesn’t ask about what he doesn’t care about. The underlying Are you happy now? grows sharper and louder and covers up the noise outside, so much that he doesn’t notice when the contempt starts to leave, when something else starts to grow. Maybe Dallas doesn’t quite like him, but there’s something else there.

He doesn’t notice it, any of it, until Steve’s handing him the phone, saying Dally asked for him. 

Johnny’s not entirely sure when, but at some point during the seventh grade, a fire started burning in his chest. 

He doesn’t notice any of it until he’s screaming because there’s nothing else you can do with a body full of bullets. 

3. Ignis amoris. Love as fire: uncontrollable, burning, intense. 

He doesn’t know how it was before. Was it frozen over or just numb? Was there anything there at all?

Maybe it was just empty. What was the point of anything without the little flame to enlighten it?

At first it was quiet, warm, crackling in tune with Ponyboy’s excited rambling. They were ten and twelve, and it was the first time that Johnny found out what it meant for someone to see him and care. 

As days turned into weeks turned into months, casual touches and toothy grins and barks of laughter threw firewood into the flame. It would flare protectively when a Soc shoved Soda when he was just trying to get to class, burn warmly when Steve waited for them in his car despite having a free last period, thaw even the coldest of nights as long as Dally was in the lot beside him. It reached his cheeks when Darry called him smart and burned brighter every evening spent with Two-Bit, wandering around and avoiding responsibility. 

But when it really roars to life, when it becomes a starved monster that takes over Johnny’s body, is when crickets fill the air or the wind whistles past his ear or the low rumble of whatever cars are still driving around reaches the lot, whispering to him as he lies on his side, eyes tracing Dally’s profile. 

When it crawls up his throat, when it starts making his brain do flips, is when the stars glitter in the sky above him or when clouds crawl over them and bathe the city in darkness or when it’s pouring and he’s running with Dally, jackets over their heads, trying to find a roof to huddle under. 

When it turns from warmth to heat, when it turns from comfort to exposing hidden truths about himself, is when he lies next to Dally in the lot, both pretending that they don’t have to pretend, fingers inching closer, pinkies only just grazing as the sun comes up. 

And then he has the sun to bring him heat, and the fire turns back into embers with small, pale flames above it, and Dally’s still beside him but it isn’t the same when there isn’t the rush of adrenaline, the weight of the news stories, the freedom that darkness brings.

But it burns nonetheless. 

There is a world where that fire never starts burning. Where Johnny’s chest stays empty and cold and dark, where the hearth gathers dust as it’s beaten day after day. 

In that world, Johnny doesn’t survive. 

How ironic, then, that it should be fire to take him from this one. 

4. Furor amoris. Love as madness: all-consuming. We are blinded by it, confounded, and act purely out of passion, rationality all but forgotten. 

Dally isn’t thinking. His head is completely blank, just like that bullshit the hippies spread around. 

A couple minutes ago, he was stumbling around hazy, dark blues, forest greens wrapping around him, black ink dripping down from the sky. 

Now there’s red streaks tunneling around him, bringing him down the only direction he can go in. 

Dead.

Red like Johnny’s jacket collar four months ago in that field that Dally takes a long way around to avoid seeing. 

Dead.

Red like when the church brought them straight into hell yesterday. 

Dead.

Red like the rumble. 

Dead.

Red like the sirens following him as he runs for his life.

5. Amor post mortem. Love after death; overcoming the menial, human barriers of a heart beating. Love as the only eternal thing in a life full of the fleeting.  

Ponyboy sighs and lies back on his bed. 

Usually, Johnny would be lying next to him, bouncing ideas off him to see if anything inspired him. Dally would come storming in, not even bothering to knock. Mom would ask if he made any progress when he came back down to dinner. Dad would tell him it was fine, that he’d think of something like he always did. 

It’s hard to come to terms with. 

Maybe part of him will always be in denial. Maybe part of him will always turn to Mom to ask where the oven mitts are. Look for Johnny whenever he steps into a room. Trust that Dally’ll get back at whoever tries to hurt him. Want to ask Dad to tell that story about when they were kids again. 

Is that what love is? 

This can’t possibly be it. It can’t possibly be something that follows Ponyboy around, wakes him up when he thinks he’s finally worked past his nightmares, seems to disappear then comes back to haunt him, crawling up from behind to see if it can finally get a scream out of him.

No, it can’t be. It isn’t. 

What it is is Darry staying up late to calm him down from a nightmare. It's Steve knowing when to quit the teasing. It's Two-Bit leaving books on his nightstand without a word about it. It's Soda asking him about his day, every day without fail, no matter how tired he is. 

What it was was Dally offering to teach him to fight. Johnny listening to him every time he went on a rant or monologued about whatever book he’d just read. Mom setting aside a couple hamantaschen for him when he had track until late on Purim. Doing his bar mitzvah in the same tallit his father had done his in. 

And maybe it didn’t change anything. In fact, it didn’t.