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Disclaimer: S.E. Hinton owns The Outsiders and characters. I own Franny.
The weekend was all about celebration and I did my share at Buck’s with Dally and the boys.
I was in detention all the next week because of that fight with Mr. Chili on school grounds the Thursday before. Mr. Casing’s not a bad guy, you can tell because his idea of punishment is pretty funny. A battered Dave Brubaker was sharing detention with a good handful of greasers that’d seen his ass handed to him on a platter, and he wasn’t too happy about it.
I, on the other hand, had never enjoyed detention so much. I was pretty close to gettin' detention for acting up in detention, but I made it through to Friday without gettin' a second sentence. I think Mr. Casing likes me underneath his threats to call the cops on me and expel me for good.
When I got out of detention late Friday afternoon, I found Franny leaning against my car.
“Hey,” I said to her, not too sure about the reception I was gonna get. We hadn't really seen each other since the fight the weekend before.
“Hey,” she answered, smiling a little at me.
“What’s up?”
“Gerald’s coming home,” she said, her voice brightening a little. “We got to talk to him last night. He’s doing okay, but he didn’t say much about his leg. They’re flying him to the Navy hospital at Balboa, in San Diego. He’ll be there by Monday.”
“That’s good news.”
“Yeah, it is,” she said, her smile kind of fading. “I’m going out there.”
“I figured you would,” I said, leaning back against the car next to her.
“No, Two-Bit,” she said softly. “I’m going out there for good.”
I turned to look at her, not sure she was tellin’ the truth. But I could see on her face she was.
“I want to be close to him, and my mom, well, she can't just leave her job here yet, even though she wants to be there for him. She doesn't want to go back to California just yet, and my dad's got his job in Pasadena ... " she said. “My mom won't be able to move back for awhile. Someone needs to be there with him, and my mom has a friend in San Diego I can stay with. I leave tomorrow.”
“So you’re really going then,” I repeated. "Ever gonna be back?"
“My mom and Lindy will still be here, at least for awhile. My grandma still lives here. So ... maybe,” she said with a sigh.
“Any part of this decision have to do with me?” I asked, a joking sound to my voice, but a serious question underneath it all.
She was quiet for a second.
“Two-Bit, I don’t fit in here. I don’t fit in your world and I don’t fit in the Soc’s world, but it seems like they’re the only ones available here,” she sighed. “Maybe if I hadn’t met you I would’ve found some middle ground, but now I don’t fit into that world either. Not here anyway.”
I guess it was true. I should've stuck to my guns the first time I saw her, let her fit in her way and maybe she wouldn't be runnin' off like this.
“You fit in just fine,” I said, even though I knew I was lyin' through my teeth. She smiled at that, laughing a bit.
“You know that isn’t true. I think I proved it last weekend,” she said softly. “I can’t stand all these fights. Since Gerald got hurt ... well, it makes me sick to my stomach to see it all. Since you and Brubaker had your fight, it’s heated everything up again. I’ve never seen so much fighting break out in school before.”
"You think it's abnormal, it's just the way it is here. Right before you came they beat Johnny half to death," I told her. "It's how he got that scar."“He didn’t deserve that, no one does. But beating someone up in revenge, it doesn't help in the end,” she said.
I thought about what Johnny’s face had looked like all cut up and how scared he’d been. I ain’t never seen him break down before and it had almost broke me to see it. Johnny survived … but he wasn’t the same, and that was the Soc’s fault, not mine.
“I did the right thing,” I stated, looking her in the eye, like I was daring her to contradict.
“I know you think you did,” she sighed. “Maybe you did, I don’t know. All I know is this fighting is futile. It’s not getting anyone anything. I figured you were smart enough to see that.”
I was quiet for a second.
“Maybe I’m smart enough to see that if we figured out the futility of fightin’, we wouldn’t have much hope,” I said gently. “And maybe hope’s all we got.”
She looked down at the ground and then over at me, then leaned up and kissed me. I snaked my hand up behind her head and kissed her back, exploring her mouth and wondering for the hundredth time what would’ve happened if that cop hadn’t shown up … if I hadn’t noticed her crying … if I hadn't had a damn conscience ... if we’d been on a real date instead of what it had been … if I hadn’t just driven her to my place, if I’d given her what she thought she'd wanted that night.
“You regret it?” I asked her as we broke apart, knowin’ I’d go crazy if I never found out the answer.
“Regret what?”
I smiled slyly. “Up at the lake. You regret it?”
“Not the way you think I do,” she said. She smiled very slowly at me and leaned up and kissed me again, pressing her body against mine. I wrapped an arm around her waist and pulled her to me as tightly as I could.
I kissed her again, softly, and we broke apart.
“Maybe this woulda worked out better if I’d have moved to Pasadena,” I said with a grin, my forehead pressed against hers. She smiled back wanly.
“It probably would have,” she said seriously. She leaned up and kissed me again. “Goodbye, Two-Bit.”
“Bye, Franny.”
And so she walked across the grass towards the sidewalk, her short skirt giving me too much to think about as she walked away. I looked down at the ground and felt a little lonely. I’d been crazy to think it ever could’ve worked out anyway.
“Two-Bit?” she called, turning back around. I lifted my head up to look at her.
“Thanks,” she said.
“What for?” I asked her.
She smiled for a second before answering. “For crossing the parking lot.”
I smiled back at her and she slowly turned away, the wind catching her blonde hair and kicking it up wildly as she walked. It was the last time I ever saw her.
THE END