hidden pain|INACTIVE

[sodapop]

[Note from Admin: Please remember to put the pace in your titles. Thanks!]

"You certainly are a good man," A small blonde woman said as she received the keys to her newly repaired Honda Odessy, "Your parents raised you well."
Sodapop didn't think mentioning that his parents were dead would let the woman leave with a smile, and Mr. Dean was all about the customer leaving happy. So he kept silent and went back to reading Car and Driver. A few minutes later he and Steve both left the gas station, however unlike everyday Steve parted way with him, something about playing pool.

Really he didn't have a problem with it, gave the boy some time to think about other things then cars and girls. What if he was raised by his parents? Would he still be the way he is now, level-headed, reckless and sometimes cautious? He knew he wouldn't be level-headed and caustious if not for looking out for Ponyboy every day, and he only had to look out for Pony because his parents were killed in a car crash.

Darry had also said something about the reason Soda never drinking was because of his parents being killed by a drunk driver. So was he saying that if they didn't die he'd be passing out in the streets with the rest of his buddies on a Friday night? He realized he was walking in the complete opposite direction from home, and some how he managed to find himself at his parents grave. Just great.

He backed up against the wrought iron gate, his hands were now shaky and cold, why on earth had he come here? He was now forced to relive painful memories and he didn't like the fact that he allowed tears to run down his cheeks. Dally would kill him if he found him like this, and just the thought of any of the greasers beside Pony finding him in tears made his skin crawl. He slid down and brought his knees up to his chest, wiping his eyes on the sleeve of his jacket and forcing himself to breath normally.

Then he looked up and stared face to face with the headstone, it was a simple one, plain gray with a small Celtic cross on the top. The names were carved in a fancy writing whilst the memoir was small and barely readable from the distance he sat. Darrel and Lauren Curtis. Names he hadn't said in quiet a while, names he'd written on a farewell letter just before the funeral when he was only fourteen. He looked down again, wishing he'd brought something to lay on the grave, but of course the thought of visiting had only came on a whim.

[cherry]

[/b] she said, breaking the eerie silence of the graveyard. It was true that Katrina didn't know him and didn't know how he would react to being intruded on, but Katrina knew how he felt. It sucked whenever someone close to you died.


ooc; i took this because of the ic cbox. hope it's okay. =] [/ul]

[sodapop]

"Here."

The voice was a softer version of a familiar one, although he couldn't put his finger on who it was and didn't look up until he was sure he knew no greaser girls with that voice. If they saw him in tears, well they'd think of him more as a sad teddy bear then a cute guy, and who wanted that? He looked up to see a pair of daisies hanging in his face and brightened a bit, he took one in each hand and laid them over the graves. His frown becoming a mere shadow now, and a smile crept up behind it, "Hey thanks."

He now recognized the girl, the one who got in between his and Irene's spat on the Brooklyn Bridge, and instead of a death match she turned it into a comic relief. Sodapop liked girls who could do that, stuffy girls weren't his favorite and the loud girls weren't either. He was very picky about his women, even if it didn't seem that way. He looked around for some sort of Funeral gathering, something the high-class blonde would be attending, but when he found no one in sight he finally said, "So what are you doing here?"

[cherry]

[/b] Katrina replied, smiling as he eagerly took the stems from her and laid them on the graves he was staring at. She shifted, adjusting the bunch of flowers in her hand to make up for the empty spaces she had just made, not failing to see the small smile that had formed on her counterparts face. As his words, Katrina shrugged, catching her lips between her teeth.

She didn't exactly look like the one to be in a cemetery and she didn't look like she was dressed for a funeral. Katrina looked around the patch of land, the monuments lined in rows like ghostly sentinels. "Bringing flowers to someone I used to know." Katrina replied vaguely with a nod, tilting her head a bit as she looked down at him. "My step mom is buried here." she clarified, head turning in the direction of Deandra's grave. It had been a long time since Katrina had visited her dear old step mother; not for at least a year and a half. In her younger years she went often, mostly because her father liked her to. The old man was lonely without his trophy wife around and since Katrina had moved out he had taken to watching Dutch soap operas to fill his time. Katrina didn't visit him often, finding it odd to always catch him in the middle of the latest Dutch drama.

"What about them?" Katrina asked, gesturing to the graves that he had just put flowers on. "Were they close to you?" She continued, bending down and sitting on the grass next to him. [/ul]

[sodapop]

"Bringing flowers to someone I used to know... My step mom is buried here."

Sodapop chuckled, this was probably the only person he knew who went to a cemetery to visit their step mom. Only because most of the kids he knew hated their birth parents and the ones who were lucky enough to have divorced parents hated their step-parents even more, "Funny, how I knew the moment I saw you, you'd be an odd one."
He didn't mean on in a bad way, odd to him was a good thing, because odd meant you weren't the serious greaser type, like Dallas or Tim Shepard, odd meant you weren't hard as a rock and actually had some emotions under all the muscle.



"What about them... Were they close to you?"

Sodapop nodded and coughed trying to cover up the sob that was begging to escape his throat, he glanced back at the head stones as the girl sat down next to him, he didn't like the idea that all his parents had been reduced to was a pair of rocks and vague memories, he buried his face in his knees again, not looking back up until he was sure he wasn't going to cry, "Yeah, their my, uh, their my parents..."

[cherry]

[/b] Katrina reminded him. That morning had been hazy- Katrina was half drunk and half hungover when she met him. "I'm surprised you didn't think I was some kind of alcoholic." Katrina laughed and tucked her hair behind her ear, blue eyes twinkling in her amusement.

Katrina's eyebrows knitted in the center of her forehead, intently looking at him as he answered her question. When he spoke, Katrina felt bad for asking him since obviously it was a painful thing for him to talk about, let alone think about. "I'm sorry. I know how you feel." Katrina said simply, not knowing what else to say. "My birth mother died when I was eight years old." Katrina never liked talking about her mother and when the topic came up she had the tendency to avoid it, but the saying was something about birds of a feather.. that wasn't really important though.

"You're Sodapop, right?" Katrina asked, moving away from the subject of dead parents. It was true they were in a cemetery, but that wasn't necessarily a license to be depressed. "I'm Katrina." She didn't remember if she had told him her name on the bridge or if she had simply been the Unnamed Blonde. It hadn't occurred to her either that his parents had probably been on acid when they named him; at least it was original. [/ul]

[sodapop]

"Yeah," The corners of his mouth twitched a bit as if he were about to smile but decided against it, "The one and definitely the only, Sodapop."

Alright. He smiled, but only because he found his last comment funny. He was sure he was the only kid named Sodapop in the world, and if he was wrong then he just might change his name to something even crazier!

"I'm Katrina."

"What do ya think about the nickname Kat?" Sodapop asked, nudging Katrina with his elbow playfully, he wasn't giving her the nickname out of rudeness, solely because he thought 'Katrina' was to plain and in a way sort of flaunted the fact that the girl was rich. So Kat would do just nicely.

He looked left and right, trying to figure out something else to say, and out of lack of a better subject he asked, "So what on earth gave you the idea to get into an 'almost knife fight?'"
He said once again recalling the night before.

[cherry]

[/b] Katrina said with a short laugh. If only her parents had been the same way- Katrina Jezebel Van Tassel wasn’t the most unique name there was, and it always made her sound like some high class snob. Of course her parents had to give her a name that was meant to reflect the kind of personality she was supposed to have so people could judge her before they even knew her. Obviously Sodapop hadn’t been quick to judge her if he was going to give her a sweet little nickname. Kat? It made sense and she could live with it- she had been called worse before. ”I can deal with that.” she voiced her thoughts and nodded. He could have called her Blondie or Wino instead, but Kat was good. She smiled then at what he asked her.

Had it really been an almost knife fight? Trina couldn’t really remember, but she did have the fuzzy picture of Sodapop pulling a knife on that brunette he had been talking to. ”I don’t really know, exactly.” Katrina answered with a shrug, furrowing her eyebrows a bit as she looked over at him. ”I was just walking home and I saw these people arguing, and I figured that if I could do something about it then I should.” Katrina had always been the helping kind, offering a shoulder to people and a bed for them to sleep in if they needed it. She didn’t think she could ever turn a person away if they needed help, even if they were running from the cops and needed a place to hide. Sometimes she was too nice for her own good, but she had been raised that way. She had also been raised to not be a push over, as odd as that was. Katrina was just a complex creature wrapped in riddle inside of an enigma. Katrina narrowed her eyes at him, wondering why he had to ask her that question when it had been him that had been in the real danger.

”What about you? You were closer to getting into an ‘almost knife fight’ then I was with your darling ex wife.” she said. Maybe she hadn’t been his ex wife, but she still acted like she had some rights over him. Katrina wondered if he had ever gotten his wallet back from her.[/ul]

[sodapop]

"You were just walking home, at four a.m?" he chuckled a bit, remembering how Kat just staggered on up to Irene and him then interjected herself into their argument, "You know, you look a lot better when your not tripping on your own two feet, trust me."

God that was cheesy, the second he said it he wanted to kick himself, he guessed he just wasn't thinking straight and was completely caught of guard in a number of ways. "What I meant wa-" He was cut-off by Kat continuing to talk and figured she didn't catch on so he shut his mouth and let her finish.

”What about you? You were closer to getting into an ‘almost knife fight’ then I was with your darling ex wife.”

He laughed, Soda was practically being stalked by Irene, wherever he was she some how managed to find him. It was almost creepy. What made it really creepy was Katrina calling her his ex wife, he shook his head, "Geez kid if I could only tell you how many times I've run into her since my friend Dallas started messing with her."

He lit a cigarette, they were real help when you need to think, "You know she makes it out like I was the one bothering her," Soda shuddered at the thought and blew out a bunch of smoke, "So in no way is she my ex anything! I only pulled the knife because she was starting to piss me off, chicks got a gun to and you can never be to careful."