Disclaimer: S.E. Hinton owns The Outsiders and all the characters and settings it contains. I am borrowing because I love what she did.

Author's Note: This story ties in to Middle Ground, Triangle and Holding Back The Years.

April 1966

Tricia Baxter lingered in the parking lot after school, nervously pushing her honey brown hair out of her eyes.

“Just go and talk to him,” Barbara Mason said exasperatedly.

“Barbie, don’t be stupid,” Joyce Davis said. “Stop encouraging her. He’s just a kid; he’s not even fifteen years old yet. He goes to middle school.”

“How do you know that?” Tricia asked, turning towards Joyce. Her friend always looked like she was smelling something unpleasant.

Joyce was caught off guard by Tricia’s question.

“Well, I heard it from Tim, of course,” Joyce said, quickly regaining her composure. “You dated Tim Shepard, why would you want to date his little brother? He ain’t nearly as tough.”

Tricia looked over at the boy leaning against Carl Hamilton’s car. He was running his hands through his dark curls, looking all the world like he belonged at Will Rogers when he wasn’t even old enough to attend.

She remembered that first week of school vividly. He had been hanging out in the parking lot of Rogers will some of his friends; members of his brother’s gang. Making sure her friends had left , she had gone up to him in the parking lot after school, taken a deep breath, then asked him if he wanted to go to the Dingo with her after school.

He had started laughing.

She still remembered his words: “You gotta be kiddin’ me.” She had turned and walked back inside as quick as she could, taking refuge in a bathroom by the science classrooms none of the girls ever used because the toilets never flushed right. She had cried until her eyes were good and red.

He didn’t think she was good enough for him. Well, at least she knew.

But she couldn’t give up on him. She thought about him all the time and saw him everywhere she went.

And then came Tim.

XXXX

Late September 1965

“I’m tellin’ you, Tim, that bitch just wanted to embarrass me like her stupid friends,” Curly said, leaning against Tim’s Buick in Buck’s parking lot. The thing was a piece of shit, but at least it ran.

“Yeah?” Tim said.

“Those two bitches think they’re so smart,” Curly said. “What’s that chick’s name? Joyce something or other? Yeah, she walked up bold as can be and was hittin’ on Ray like she was hard up for it the other day, I started in on her and she blasted me one. Said I shouldn’t be hangin’ around Rogers cuz they don’t let kids that ain’t been potty trained in. I hate that broad, man. Her friends ain’t no better.”

“What happened this time?” Tim asked, sounding less than patient.

“They overheard me talkin’ about one of ‘em, and that bitchy Joyce broad comes over and tells me how they ain’t never seen a mess like me before, and they wouldn’t date me if I was the last guy on earth,” Curly said, feeling more embarrassed as he said it all out loud. “She may have said the universe, I don’t know.”

He could’ve sworn he saw Tim’s lip twitch, like he was gonna laugh. Shit, even his own brother!

“What’d you do?”

“Told ‘em they weren’t much to look at anyway,” he said. “Then after school that chick Tricia Baxter comes up to me and asked me to go to the Dingo with her. I told her she had to be kidding. I ain’t all that book smart, but I sure don’t got rocks in my head. She’s a junior, what the hell was she even talking to me for? No junior has ever asked out a kid from middle school, I’ll tell you that. She was up to something, I know it. I bet Joyce put her up to it. We’d go out, she’d order a bunch of shit she wouldn’t eat, her friends would show up and I’d end up wearin’ the entire order.”

This time Tim did grin a little.

“It ain’t funny, Tim,” he said to his brother. “I smelled like onion rings for three days after Sue Beth Lane dumped that shit all over me. If I remember right, you were just standing there watching.”

“Because I ain’t stupid enough to ask a broad why she ordered all that shit if she was so afraid of getting fat,” Tim said.

“Well, she was whining about it!” Curly exploded. “How was I supposed to know she wouldn’t take so kindly to me tellin’ her to lay off the fucking onion rings?”

Tim laughed again and shook his head.

Curly sighed and lit another cigarette. One of these days Tim was going to have to take him seriously.

“Those girls are stupid themselves. Like I’m gonna believe a fucking gorgeous junior is gonna ask a middle school kid out,” Curly said. “Tricia ain’t gonna get the satisfaction of making me look stupid.”

“Nope,” Tim said. “You can do that all by yourself.”

Tim got in the driver’s seat. Curly was pretty sure Tim didn’t see him flip him off, but it made him feel better anyway.

XXXX

Buck Merril’s place was not a good place for a sixteen-year-old girl, even one who thought she’d seen some rough places. There were all kinds of people there, from rusted-up cowboys to girls who’d been through the wringer and everything in between.

She’d worn a short shirt and a blouse she’d borrowed from Kathy Pearce; a blouse so low-cut she was terrified her chest would fall out, and she wouldn’t even notice. Her mother would up and have a heart attack if she’d seen her go out like that.

She spotted Kathy sitting with Two-Bit, and she went up to the bar and got a beer from Irene. Irene didn’t even ask for ID anymore; she just knew everyone was underage.

Tricia looked around the bar, trying to spot Curly. She was startled when her gaze rested on Tim, watching her from across the bar. She hastily looked away, turning towards the ugly painting of dogs playing poker on Buck’s wall.

A moment later Tim had come up to the bar himself.

Tricia was startled to feel Tim’s arm brush against her own as he stood at the bar. He turned around, leaning against the bar rail, and looked over at Tricia, who was facing the bar.

“Word has it you were tryin’ to show Curly a rough time,” he said, taking a drink of his beer, his gaze on the room and not her.

“What?” she asked, surprised he was talking to her.

“This afternoon at school,” he said.

“I wasn’t trying to do anything,” she stammered. “Curly’s real nice.”

“Sure,” Tim said.

Tim turned around, then leaned down so his lips were close to her ear. She could see the scar on his cheek, a deep gash he’d got from a bottle slashing his face open, still angry and red. She shivered a little.

“You ain’t gonna bother Curly no more,” he said.

She turned slightly so she was facing him.

“I wasn’t bothering him in the first place,” she said, looking up into his eyes.

He looked at her for a moment, his face impassive, then managed to crack a tiny smile.

“You got guts,” he said, then disappeared into the crowd.

XXXX

She went back to Buck’s every weekend she could and was finally rewarded with seeing Curly there at the beginning of October. Her elation was tempered when she saw him slow dancing with freshman Debbie MacComber in the middle of the dance floor, his hands on her ass. She was giggling like a floozy, and it made Tricia’s blood boil.

“I’ll have a vodka tonic,” she told Buck, who just raised an eyebrow before mixing her one. She downed it in less than five minutes.

Curly left with Debbie around midnight, and Tricia drank her third drink. She was feeling pretty light-headed when she noticed Tim was looking at her again.

“You better slow down before you fall down,” he said after he’d walked over to her.

“I’d rather lie down,” she said honestly, feeling a little sick. The room seemed like it was spinning.

“Come on,” Tim said.

He took her upstairs, and if she was in her right mind, she never would’ve gone. She knew what happened upstairs at Buck’s. Everybody knew, and that was half the problem.

But Tim hadn’t taken advantage. Well, he’d kissed her, and it was nice and all, but all Tricia felt was a combination of dizziness and a willingness to pretend it was Curly, which made her feel so guilty she’d started to cry.

Tim had frowned, then sighed, then put her to bed in the double iron bed which creaked so bad it was like nails on a chalkboard. She’d woken up in a complete panic, but Tim had driven her over to Kathy’s house instead of home.

“You busy Tuesday night?” he asked, looking straight ahead and lighting a cigarette.

“No,” she said.

He nodded. “I’ll pick you up at seven.”

She had stood on the curb in shock, too surprised to say yes or no.

“Don’t you need my address?” she called out, as he made a three-point turn on her busy street.

“Nope,” he said, idling in the middle of the road and earning a honk from another driver, to which he responded with the finger. “I already know.”

He peeled away, leaving black tire marks and a cloud of exhaust behind.

She had sat down on Kathy’s porch and tried to figure out how she fell for one brother and started dating the other.

XXXX

Dating Tim had been a mistake, but it had at least garnered her some attention from Curly. She had been over to their house and saw where they lived. She’d even ridden with Tim to pick up Curly and their sister Angela at the middle school. Curly had ignored her, and she’d been short with Tim because of it. He didn’t take kindly to it, and that tipped off the first of their fights. All of them were about nothing, but at least it made Curly look her way when she started shouting at Tim.

Tim had turned out to be a decent date, at least until he started taking her upstairs in Buck’s. They made out for awhile, but he kept trying to push it, and she kept trying to stop it.

“What’s your problem, anyway?” he asked, lighting a cigarette.

“You seem like you’re in an awful hurry,” she said, pulling her shirt down.

“So’s everyone else,” he said. “You seem to be the only one around here with brakes.”

She turned away from him.

“Fucking fantastic,” she heard him murmur.

It felt so damn wrong being in that room with him. There was no way she could up and tell Tim she thought his brother was cute, and she’d rather be dating him. No one ever said no to Tim Shepard. She didn’t want to start, but there was no way she was getting in that bed with him. She’d heard stories from some of the other girls about him, but she didn’t want to be one of his stories. Curly would never even look at her again. This was all a huge mistake.

“I have to go,” she said, feeling close to tears. She had made such a huge mess of everything.

“You be damn sure if you walk out you don’t come back,” Tim said.

She opened the door and left.

XXXX

Curly was watching television, wearing only a pair of jeans, and eating a bowl of Corn Flakes when Tim finally sauntered downstairs.

“I heard you broke up with Tricia,” he said. “Good. Don’t know why you was dating that bitch anyway after what she did to me.”

“She said she didn’t do anything,” Tim said from the kitchen. A moment later he’d sat down on the couch with a cup of coffee and the paper. Curly never got why he read the paper so much, it was boring shit, except when your name got it in, and that had only happened to Curly once.

“You still didn’t have to date her,” Curly said morosely.

“Sure, I did,” Tim said. “I wanted to know if all them rumours were true."

Curly looked over at his big brother.

“What rumours? She real good or something?”

Tim shrugged. “I’ve had better, but from what I heard she’s been practicing her moves on every guy in town.”

“No shit,” Curly said. “She ain’t seem like the type, she never came around Buck’s much ‘til recently.”

“Trust me, she’d do anything in a square mile radius,” Tim said.

“Except me,” Curly said wryly. “So if you was getting it from her, how come she never slept over?”

“Didn’t want to,” Tim said curtly. “She ain’t above chargin’ for it, neither, that's why I dumped her whoring ass. Curly, I ever catch you lookin’ at her, I’ll beat the shit outta you. There’s only a few types of girls in this world. Some of ‘em might be fast, like Sylvia or Carolyn, but at least they ain’t whores. I ever catch you messin’ around with any chick that’s into that, I’ll beat your head in so hard no one’ll know we’re related.”

“Tricia sure didn’t seem like the whoring type,” Curly said, looking at Tim with wide eyes. “How’d she ever think you’d need to pay a broad for that?”

“She’s stupid,” Tim said forcefully. “Tricia Baxter ain’t nothing but a whore. Everybody knows it.”

XXXX

It had been three weeks since she’d seen Tim, and she hadn’t missed him once. She’d seen Curly around the school parking lot and the Dingo, but he always avoided her, looking at her like she wasn’t even good enough to be breathing the same air. The last few weeks he hadn’t been on her mind as much; she had whole new problems now.

Tim was being smart and telling everyone she slept with him and God only knows who else. The first time she’d heard the rumours her ears had burned with embarrassment. How on earth could anyone think she was like that!

Everyone in school was staring, and she’d been propositioned by some of the boys at school. The first time it had happened, she'd spent fourth period in the girls bathroom crying, feeling sick at the thought a boy could even think she'd do something like that. She'd heard about girls like that, there were a bunch of working girls downtown all tarted up. She had no idea how this had happened.

Even the girls were treating her like garbage. Joyce had marched off with Barbara until Tricia had broken down in tears on Barbara’s doorstep after school one day. Joyce kept her distance now; the attitude she saved for girls she hated had been moved underground and directed at her. She caught all the little slams Joyce made at her, and she knew everyone else had, too.

She couldn’t even look Curly in the eye now. He cracked jokes about her when he saw her in the parking lot, and she didn’t even want to know what Curly thought of her, it couldn’t be good.

So she’d watch him in the neighbourhood and see him around the Dingo or Buck’s, but there was no way she could ever talk to him again. It was over.

XXXX

April 1966

Tricia snapped out of her daydream and watched Curly run his fingers through his curly, dark hair, grinning devilishly at three of the other Shepard gang members hanging around with him. She tried to control her breathing – remembering all the horrible things Tim had spread around about her had brought her close to tears.

She watched as Curly laughed and joked with his friends. It had been months since the rumours had started floating around, and she was hoping people were starting to forget. She knew people still talked, but she wasn’t the prime target for the boys right now, since they were so caught up with fighting with the Socs. The girls still talked, and Tricia suspected Joyce was even helping the rumours along.

As Curly and Carl Hamilton joked, she watched as Curly looked at someone who had just come out the side door. Tricia turned her head and saw the small girl with pale blonde hair walking towards them all. She had been in school for only a week or two, but she wore such short skirts everyone in school had been talking about her. It sure said something that she’d even caught Curly’s attention, and he didn’t even go to the high school.

“Hey, Franny,” Curly said, watching as the blonde stepped nearer to him. It just burned her that this little California girl got his attention so easily. Tricia had been very careful to wear her most conservative clothes nowadays, but this girl wore the shortest skirt she ever saw and no one was calling her a whore.

Tricia watched as the blonde curtly ignored him. She wasn’t too worried – rumour had it she was dating Two-Bit Mathews. She knew that rumour was going to get around to Kathy Pearce pretty fast, and she wouldn’t have wanted to be that blonde girl for anything if that happened.

Tricia sighed. Curly had never looked at her the way he was looking at Franny. The girl glanced over at Curly a few times, and Tricia almost smirked; she looked scared. Sure, Curly was tough and all, like his brother, but he also was kind of sweet. She had never told anyone about the day last week when she’d walked home from school the long way and saw Curly walking ahead of her. He had surprised her by stopping on the sidewalk, then bending down and picking something small up.

It had been a baby bird.

She remembered feeling a little sick, wondering what a tough hood like Curly Shepard was going to do with the bird. Instead of twisting its neck, like she’d seen some boys in her neighbourhood do when she was in grade school, he’d looked around and spotted the nest high up in the tree. He’d climbed up the tree with one hand and placed the bird back inside. It hadn’t been his fault that the mother bird had thought he was up to something and dive bombed him. He’d landed pretty hard when he’d fallen out of the tree and onto the grass.

She had wanted to rush up to him and see if he was alright, but she’d held back. He had sworn a few times, kicked the tree, then continued on down the street, the birds squawking from the safety of their nest.

“Earth to Tricia!” Barbara was saying, waving a piece of paper in her face.

“What?”

“I asked if you were coming to the Dingo with us?” Barbara asked.

“I’ll meet you there,” she said.

Joyce rolled her eyes, and they began to walk in the direction of The Dingo. Tricia turned her attention back to Curly. He was bothering the blonde girl, trying to step in front of her so she’d have to walk around him. Good Lord, he couldn’t have liked her more if he tried. It was now or never - Curly hadn't directed a single awful comment towards her in months, and with any luck, he'd forgotten all about the rumours. This was her chance. If she could only get him to spend an hour or so with her, he'd see she wasn't anything like what Tim was saying.

She took in a deep breath, preparing herself to talk to him, then gasped as Curly’s tripped on a loose shoelace and hit the ground, landing flat on his ass in a puddle of water, right at Barbara and Joyce’s feet as they passed by.

The blonde girl escaped while everyone around Curly laughed, Barbara and Joyce included. Joyce looked back at her and rolled her eyes again, then turned around and marched around Curly like he wasn’t even there.

Carl Hamilton and Ray Roth were laughing so hard they could barely stand up. Curly struggled to his feet.

“Shut the fuck up, I meant to do that,” Curly said, his face bright red.

“Right, Shepard,” Roth said, slapping him on the back. “You get a wet ass for every girl in a short skirt?”

Hamilton started laughing again, and he and Roth got in Carl’s car and took off out of the parking lot, leaving Curly behind.

Tricia took a deep breath and walked over.

“Curly?”

He looked over at her, his eyes narrowed.

“What?”

“I was wondering … “ she started to say. Jesus, this was hard. No wonder boys had to do all the asking, girls just weren’t meant for it. It didn’t matter if the boy was younger or not, it was hard.

“What, are you gonna start laughing at me, too?” he asked bitterly. “Christ, you chicks are a fuckin’ pain in the ass.”

“I wasn’t gonna laugh,” she said.

“Sure,” Curly said, lighting a cigarette and stalking away, his pants soaked. “I don’t want what you’re sellin’. Tim told me what you do. You ain’t nothin’ around here, so quit pretending you are.”

She hadn’t even gotten a chance to ask him out.

A/N: This chapter is being posted as part of "Good Fic Day," an effort to raise the quality of writing here. We hope to encourage more writers to improve the quality of their own fan fiction - spell check, grammar check, keep the gang in character, outline, plot and don't use Mary Sues. Good fan fiction requires effort, and we would like to encourage other writers to rise to the challenge of producing better fan fiction, not only for our readers, but for S.E. Hinton, who created the wonderful book we are trying to honour.