Do What You Have To Do by Another Illusion

Summary: Sandy never forgave herself for her actions in Tulsa. When her husband tries to understand her better, he pushes her back to Tulsa, where she must confront everything she has kept to herself over the years.

Author’s Note: I am British so I therefore use British spelling and the suchlike. Thanks as ever to my beta.

Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters created by S E Hinton or the song ‘Last Goodbye’ by Jeff Buckley. The title comes from the song 'Do What You Have To Do' by Sarah McLachlan and I don't own that either.

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One: Waking Up

“This is our last embrace/ Must I dream and always see your face?”

Florida, 1967.

Sandra woke up to a baby crying.

Shaking, she sat up on the sofa she had fallen asleep on and groggily pulled her jacket on over her dress. It was a good thing she had not actually gone to bed the previous night; at least she didn’t have to search around in her dresser for clothes.

She was still shaking and her legs felt like jelly as she stood up. “Stop this,” she told herself as she made her way to the kitchen as quietly as possible, “calm down, Sandy, calm down.” She turned the light on and searched for the back door key.

She carefully unlocked the door, slipped on a pair of pumps at the doorstep and shut the door. She exhaled as the door shut silently behind her.

She walked down the garden path silently, checking behind her every few steps to see whether her grandmother had woken up or not. This was now an old and tired routine, perfected precisely over time.

Fingers shaking, she dug into her pockets for a battered packet of cigarettes. She took one out and lit it quickly. She had never been much of a smoker, but now it calmed her down, besides it fit in with whom --what-- she was now.

Exhaling a cloud of smoke, she felt her breathing steady and her fingers became calmer, more controlled as she slowly regained power over her body. The faint crying of the baby still echoed in the distance like a ringing in her ears, but she forced herself to ignore it.

The sun was beginning to rise, a new day was dawning and she felt nauseas at this realisation. She continued to smoke as she walked to the bottom of the garden and opened the gate, making her way towards the beach.

Her grandmother had a really nice house; Sandy wondered how her parents had been so poor while her grandmother owned a house near the beach that was far too large for just one person. It was probably because her mother hadn’t spoken to her grandmother since she had taken up with a guy she met on a holiday and moved to his hometown, Tulsa. It seemed like Sandy’s misfortune had bought her mother together with her grandmother, for a short time at any rate.

She watched the waves come in and smiled lightly. The ocean had this calming, restorative effect she loved. When she had been pregnant she used to sneak out to the beach when she couldn’t sleep. She was hardly allowed out in the day and so came to hold those nights particularly highly. It kept her sane, she thought, actually being outside and away from the stuffy room at her grandmother’s. She remembered how hard it had been getting from the house to the beach in the later stages of her pregnancy.

She’d never planned to get knocked up at sixteen to some guy who wasn’t even her boyfriend. She had never wanted to be ‘that girl’, but she’d screwed up and now she was still here in Florida, alone and feeling like her family would never truly forgive her, or that she would never forget her boyfriend’s face when she told him it wasn’t his.

---

“I’m pregnant,” she had said quietly, looking at the floor. She’d known for over two weeks. It had taken her exactly two weeks and six days to work out a way to tell her parents, and now … she had tell her boyfriend. She pulled a loose thread from her pillow case and held the pillow close to her again, as though it could somehow comfort her after this disaster.

“What? We were always -” Soda began with that helpless look on his face, the one that Sandy had always found adorable.

“I’m pregnant and it’s not your baby,” she said bluntly, refusing to look at him.

“Whose is it?” He sounded hurt and angry, Sandy felt that maybe if she had just ripped out his heart it might have hurt him less. “Why?”

“I don’t know why I did it,” she said, but she knew. The reason was more pathetic than she could bear it to be and she could not bring herself to actually say why she had cheated on him, she just couldn’t find a way of explaining the strange, drunken thoughts that clouded her mind at the time.

“Sandy, I loved you,” he said with a heavy voice, the worst thing he could have ever said. She noted the use of past tense and froze. “I knew something was wrong, it was like you were starting to push me away, like you didn’t want me to get too close.”

After a moment, Sandy swallowed and fought back her tears, choosing to become transfixed with a stain on the carpet rather than face what was happening around her.

“Sandy?” She felt him stand up and start pacing back and forth in the cramped room. “I-I love you,” he said, motionless and staring at the floor.

“Are you trying to make me feel worse than I do already?” she asked softly. “Is this some type of punishment? What are you trying to do here, Soda?”

“I ain’t trying to make you feel worse, Sandy, you’re doing that all by yourself.”

Sandy bit her lip as she failed to fight back her tears. It had all gone horrifically wrong; this wasn’t her plan for life, she hadn’t wanted to get pregnant at sixteen, she hadn’t wanted any of this, and this conversation was killing her.

“Sandy, I’m trying to work something through, give me a minute.”

The sound of his pacing was hurting her head. She took a deep breath and tried to regain her composure.

“Marry me?”

“What?” she asked, completely surprised at his sudden question.

“Marry me,” he repeated, more a command than a question, “I only really want to be with you, you’re not like those other girls I’ve been with. You’re special. I’m not saying it’s going to be okay straight away, y’know, especially if it isn’t- but you can say it is. I’ll stand by you, Sandy.”

“My parents wouldn’t let me, I’m going to Florida. I already told … well, they assumed it was yours. I couldn’t-” She couldn’t finish her sentences, everything was disjointed and she couldn’t even process everything in her mind.

“But you tell me the truth, huh? Don’t I matter as much as what your precious parents think of you? Florida?” he asked. “Florida, like the state Florida?”

“Yes. Mama’s from there, she moved here when she met Daddy. I have to go live with my grandmother,” she explained flatly.

“Are you coming back?” he asked.

“No,” she said matter-of-factly, “you know that gossip sticks. I would never be able to walk into Will Rogers again. Everybody would know and I just would never be seen as anything but that girl who got knocked up. At least if I stay in Florida, people don’t have to know,” she said, reciting exactly what her mother had said when her parents had decided what to do with her.

“Sandy, I-”

She sighed. “That’s it, it’s done. We’re done.”

Soda looked at her suddenly. “Did you ever love me?”

“Soda, please quit being like this,” she said, reluctant to answer and avoiding looking at him again. She had loved him; he was gorgeous, kind and he made her feel good about herself. She could hardly believe her luck that Sodapop Curtis, one of the cutest guys who ever graced God’s earth, had wanted to be with her. The fact that he still wanted to be with her now stung more than anything, it stung until there were sharp tears prickling her eyes, threatening to spill down her cheeks.

“Being like what?” he asked looking like he didn’t understand what she was saying, like it was some foreign language or something like that; something he would never be able to comprehend on his own.

“I don’t know,” she said, “could you just quit being like you are?”

“What, Sandy? Do you want me to yell, cry, swear, or what? What do you want from me? ” he asked loudly, running a hand through his hair.

“Why aren’t you angry?” She had expected him to explode, she knew that he could change like that. He wasn’t this angelic, god-like figure that everyone seemed to think he was, he was human and fallible and she had expected him to do something more than just look betrayed. If he was angry it would be easier, why was he making it so hard for her?

“I am angry,” he said coolly, “I’m more angry than I’ve felt in a long time, God, if you knew how angry I was. I just don’t show it like Dally or Tim. I don’t know how to talk to you, I feel sick that you could do this. But I love you, and I don’t know what else to do, I can’t make sense of this.”

“I know who the father is,” she suddenly said. “I do know.” She wasn’t even sure why she was telling him this, but she just couldn’t stand the idea that he thought she was cheap or greasy.

“Yeah?” he asked, his eyes flashed momentarily and Sandy could really see his anger for the first time. He always contained his anger and controlled himself so completely, but when he pulled out a cigarette and lit it, Sandy knew he was near his breaking point.

“I-I-” She felt frightened again; the knots that had twisted her insides all morning while she worked out how to tell Soda had resurfaced.

“Well?”

“Frankie, Frankie Stevens.”

“That kid who’s joining the Shepard gang? You cheated on me with some fuckin’ hood?” Sandy nodded, still ashamed of what he had done, but she knew that he couldn’t understand it. He would never understand why she had done it, hell, she barely could make sense of why she had done it either. Afterwards she had tried to work out what she had just done, but she couldn’t. Instead she had vowed not to tell Soda, to try not to screw everything up. Only she’d missed a period, and then she’d been sick, and although she convinced herself it was just because she’d been really stressed and had that bug, the symptoms began to add up and soon she wasn’t so able to deny the truth to herself.

“Was it worth it?” Soda suddenly asked as he stood in the doorway, his hand on the doorknob.

“Soda-”

“Was it worth it?” he pressed. “Was it worth any of this?”

She took a deep breath and rubbed her eyes. “Soda, I don’t want to have to do this.”

“I guess that it must have been worth it,” he said sadly, which tore Sandy apart. “Don’t worry, I’ll see myself out. I hope things-I-” He faltered.

“I can't believe ... I mean, with everything --” he faltered and Sandy realized just what she had done. His brother was still missing, implicated in a Soc’s murder and here she was, piling on more misery.

“Soda, I-” she began, knowing that an apology wouldn’t fix anything, but that it might make her feel a little better.

“Bye, Sandy.”

She couldn’t reply, she just watched him go, unable to process what had just happened. It all felt like a dream -- life since that doctor’s appointment had been some strange dream where she was just an observer to everything around her and she couldn’t quite get back to that stage where she was a participant yet.

---

He had written to her though, several times in fact. She had asked her grandmother to send them back; she couldn’t even look at them. As she stood there, months ago, passing the letters back to her grandmother with tears in her eyes, she knew she couldn’t ever face Soda again. He would know what she was and that had irreparably changed everything, besides he would meet someone better, someone who deserved him more than she ever had, she knew he would. She was helping him, she was keeping him away from someone who would just use him and abuse him. She made her way back to her grandmother’s, still feeling as bad as she had when she left.

That baby crying haunted her like a nightmare, only when she woke up she could still hear it for a while. Maybe that was her punishment for what had happened. She would never be able to forget what she had done, what she had allowed, the fact she had allowed them to take the baby away -- her baby. She was starting to think that this would be her Albatross, forever haunting her and reminding her of her misdeeds.

She hoped she would stop thinking about the baby soon, it was funny how the little girl she had barely seen had made such an imprint on her mind. She could see her clearly, or maybe that was just her mind playing tricks on her, lying and saying she could remember when really she couldn’t. How could she remember the kid? She was taken away from her almost instantly.

Today would be her first day of school since leaving Tulsa last Autumn, and she was dreading it. Her story was that she moved in to help look after her grandmother after her grandfather had died. No one would have to know that she had been in Florida for nearly a year. And if she had to account for being out of school for so long, she could say she had been ill. Hell, she could tell them she came to Florida because the doctors told her the weather would suit her more, help cure her mystery ailment. Sandy still wasn't sure of the fine details in the lies she would be weaving, but she would work them out. She had to, she didn't have a choice.

She would lie, lie, lie and lie some more. It was one of the things she was truly good at.