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"Curtis, lunch time for you, let's go."
"Finally," Darry mumbles under his breath bitterly. He was told three separate times in the past hour that it'd be his turn in five minutes, which was normal for him, but it didn't make it any less annoying. He climbs down the ladder, hissing slightly as his back ached. He'd definitely need to ask Soda for a back rub tonight.
"Oh, and before you come back-" Rodney, the crew leader, says as he fans himself with his clipboard. "Would you mind grabbing some of the extra lumber from the basement. We're runnin' kinda low."
"Sure thing, Rods," Darry says, removing his baseball cap and wiping away the sweat around his brow before walking away.
"And kid!" Rodney calls out and Darry turns back to face him. "Take your time, okay?" he says with a wink. Darry smiles and gives him another friendly wave before jogging over to his truck parked a few yards away. He grabs his crossword book as well as a worn down pencil he stole from Ponyboy's desk that morning. It didn't have an eraser, which Darry didn't mind since he rarely made mistakes doing crosswords anyways. Darry tucks both under his arm before heading down the stairs of the building and into the spacious basement.
Although the basement was large, it was full of nothing except the crew's extra supplies, a fridge that miraculously worked, a few folding chairs, a rickety wooden table, and a few other pieces of furniture that were there simply because they had no where else to go. Darry walks over to the fridge, grabbing both his lunch box and canteen before making his way to one of the folding chairs at the table
Him and his crew had been here for weeks. The area had previously been abandoned, but a few months ago someone bought out the land and had most of the dilapidated buildings demolished besides a few that were deemed salvageable, although they still needed a ton of work. This building in particular was once a large furniture store that went out of business during the Great Depression. Darry heard some of the guys on the crew say that the owner shot himself in the face in the basement, although he wasn't sure how true that was given that those guys loved fantastical tales even more than Ponyboy did.
Just when Darry unwraps his sandwich and goes to start on his puzzle, the lights suddenly go out, leaving him in almost pitch black darkness.
"Goddamn it!" he curses, slightly startled, but mostly annoyed. It seemed like every time he came down here the lights went out. Darry makes it a point in his mind to tell the electrical team that they need to get someone competent to fix it next time as he drags his feet over to the small closet where the breaker was.
"Shit," Darry says under his breath, his eyes not yet adjusted to the darkness struggling to figure which was the correct switch. After a few more seconds he squints enough to find it. He flips it on and off. There's a small roar and the lights flicker once or twice before shutting down once again, leaving Darry stuck in the darkness.
"Motherfuckers!" he shouts, slamming his hand against the wall next to the breaker, which causes a large piece of wood to suddenly fall. Darry gasps a bit in surprise before picking it up and placing it back against the wall, however when he does, the wood falls back, disappearing behind the wall. Darry stares wide eyed at the seemingly impossible display in front of him. He swallows hard. He was going crazy. That was it. Sodapop was right all along about him taking more days off before his brain caved in.
After a few seconds Darry gathers the courage to place his hand on the wall. He gasps again, lip trembling as he watched his hand slowly disappear behind the wall. He quickly reels it back in, feeling it with his other hand absentmindedly. "Oh my God," Darry mumbles to himself, still unsure what to think. It was like this wall was a portal, a door to another dimension. The only question he has was to where.
It would be stupid, beyond a terrible idea. It would be like sticking your toes into an alligator pond. It was too bad Darry inherited his mother's need to have an answer to everything.
He pretends like he's doing the high dive at the local pool, holding his breath, closing his eyes, and forcing his body forward.
"What the fuck do you mean he's just gone?!" Sodapop shouts, standing from the couch in outrage. "He was on the site with you and your crew all day! You said his truck's still parked there for God's sake!" Soda says, throwing his arms up in the air.
"Like I said, boys," the burly man says, rubbing his forehead in both frustration and distress. "He went on lunch and he just never came back. We searched the entire building top to bottom and we found nothing. Nobody saw him come or go. He's just-" he says, not bothering to finish the sentence before dropping his head in defeat.
Soda huffs again.
"Well, he didn't just fall off the face of the Earth!"
"Soda," Ponyboy scolds through his teeth. "Yelling isn't helping."
"Well neither is sitting around and being all calm, acting like there's nothing wrong!" Soda snaps. Ponyboy feels a pang in his chest. He wasn't used to Soda yelling at him. He knew it wasn't really at him, but it was almost as uncharacteristic as Darry skipping out on work and not returning home at dusk. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I just-" Soda pauses. "None of this makes any sense."
"If it was any other guy, I wouldn't be concerned, but I know Jr. wouldn't leave without telling nobody," Rodney says, squeezing his hands together. "If you want, I can drive you boys to the site, and you guys can pick up his truck. I was going to do another few laps around the area and see if I can find anything." "Rodney looks back up at the brothers. "Are you boys gonna file a report?"
"No. Not yet," Soda responds. "We will if we have to, but I don't want social services sniffing around," Soda says, unconsciously siting back down and snaking a protective arm around Ponyboy. "We'll look, ask around. Police probably won't be much help anyway."
"We'll find him. He'll come back," Ponyboy says, his voice quiet. "If I can come back, so can he." Soda smiles at him, and pulls his little brother closer.
"Hey, honey," Ponyboy hears a gentle voice say, snapping him out of his daze, and making him drop the book in his hands that he was barely just skimming through. Ponyboy looks up and sees Ms. Callahan looking down at him with her large, sad eyes. "Operating hours are over. I'm going to lock up soon."
"Y-yes," Ponyboy stutters. "Of course, I'll leave now."
"Pony," she says gently, placing a hand on his shoulder. "Take your time. Just do me a favor and lock the back entrance before you go."
"Sure thing, Ms. Callahan," Ponyboy says, swallowing hard. She smiles agains, rubbing his shoulder with his thumb before wordlessly walking away.
Ponyboy sighs hard, feeling his chest tighten as fresh tears filled his eyes. He lets his head drop to the table and cries quietly into his arms.
It had been well over a month since Darry disappeared, and they still had no answers, no leads, no signs, nothing. It was like the Earth grabbed his brother and swallowed him whole. Like he had been written out of existence and only the memory of him remained.
Ponyboy felt sick all day, everyday. Almost every morning for the past two weeks he had thrown up the breakfast that Sodapop forced him to eat. At this point, he was dropping weight quicker than he had after Johnny and Dallas died.
Soda wasn't faring much better. He searched for long hours everyday before and after work after the police had given up, aimlessly driving around Tulsa looking for any sign of him. Because of that, he got maybe four hours of sleep a night, and that was on a good day. The combination of sleep deprivation, the exhaustion of working long hours to cover Darry's missing income, and the grief of losing yet another family member turned Soda into a shell of his former self. He didn't smile at girls, he nodded off at work and home constantly, and seemed to have no interests in any of the things he used to love.
As hard as it was not having Darry around, it was even harder seeing his happy-go-lucky brother slowly lose his spirit, lose what made him love him more than anyone else in the world.
Because of that, the library had become a sanctuary for Ponyboy, a place he can go to minimize the time he had to spend in an empty house that only reminded him of how much he's lost. He could pretend that nothing from the past two years happened, and that he could walk home later and be greeted by Johnny and Dally smoking a cigarette together on the front porch, the smell of his mom's cooking, and the sound of his dad roughhousing with Darry and Soda in the backyard.
But now, right now, he had to face reality. His parents were dead, his best friends were dead, one of his brothers were gone, and the other one, although physically present, was also good as gone.
Ponyboy tucks his book into his backpack before slinging it over his shoulder. He makes his way to the very back of the building, walking much slower than what he was capable of. He could almost hear Darry saying "pick up your feet before I carry you, little man." Ponyboy went over to the back door, flipping the lock closed. He's no stranger to locking up for Ms. Callahan. He used to do it all the time in the summer when he would volunteer, and recently she's been letting him stay a little after close because of the circumstances as a small act of kindness.
Despite the lock, Ponyboy could still leave through the back door since it only locked it from the outside. He goes to push the heavy door, but his eye catches something in his peripheral.
A door knob, behind the book shelf.
Ponyboy stares at it for a few moments. Why on Earth would there be a doorknob behind a book shelf? Unable to leave without investigating, Ponyboy steps away from the door, getting his face closer to the crack between the bookshelf and the wall, closing his right eye to get a better look. After a few seconds of staring, Ponyboy decides to try and move the bookshelf. It wasn't a super large or tall one, so he figured he'd be able to do it, even despite his current weight loss. He has to strain, but eventually he moves it enough to get a good view.
"Huh," Ponyboy says under his breath. There was a knob, as well as a door, but only half. Like someone was going to put in a door, but decided to cut off the bottom half and only install the top, making it look almost like a trap door from those action movies. Ponyboy twists the knob, the door opens, and Ponyboy's met with nothing but disappointment.
It was just wall.
Ponyboy sighs and shuts the door. He shouldn't have expected anything else.
He goes to kick the wall gently in mild disappointment and his shoe goes through the wall.
Ponyboy immediately falls back, yelping in both surprise and fear, staring in disbelief at his foot impossibly going through the wall. He flexes it a few times before pulling it out. Everything felt normal. It was just like sticking your foot into open air. It was almost as if the wall was purely visual, not capable of stopping anything from going through it. Ponyboy pulls his feet up before getting down on his knees.
It must lead to somewhere.
"Soda, please," Steve begs, shaking Sodapop hard to try and rouse him. "You've been on this couch for almost twelve hours, get up!" Sodapop shows no acknowledgment of his friend's pleas, only rolling his body over so that he was facing the back of the couch. "Fucking hell," Steve mumbles before turning around ands storming into the kitchen.
"Nothing?" Two-Bit asks, taking out the casserole out of the fridge and lifting the tin covering the top.
"No," Steve replies, leaning against the table. "He eat any of that?"
"Take a guess," Two-Bit says with a scoff, lifting the tin up all the way to show the untouched meal.
"Try and force him to eat a slice," Steve says, grabbing a cup and plate out of the cupboard. "And then get ready to hold him down. Even if he refuses that, he's still getting water whether he likes it or not."
"Hey," Two-Bit says in a hushed tone, looking over his shoulder before turning back to Steve. He swallows hard, biting his bottom lip. "Do you think we should, you know?" He pauses. "Take him somewhere?"
"What? No!" Steve exclaims, looking almost offended at his friend. "For God's sake man, his whole family is either dead or missing, and now you're gonna stick him in a nuthouse?"
"I don't know!" Two-Bit says, looking behind him again. "They might be able to help him."
"We're helping him," Steve argues, trying to keep his voice down, but failing. "He just needs more time."
"Pony's been missing almost two months, Darry three. When is enough, enough? When is it time to admit he's dying and we're just bystanders." Two-Bit pauses, sighing and tucking his hands in his back pockets. "I know he's your buddy, and you don't wanna let him go, but you need to do what's best for him."
Steve bites his cheek and averts his gaze. He thought back to the summer he spent with his uncle when he was ten. A week after the Forth of July his dog got real sick and after a few days of the dog limping and howling in pain all night, his uncle took the animal in the backyard and shot him with his pistol. Steve had been upset with him at first, but his uncle, a man much gentler and level-headed than his own old man, explained that the dog was in pain, and that even though he didn't want to kill him, it would be cruel and selfish to keep the dog alive just because he was going to miss it.
Of course Steve was not literally going to take Sodapop out Old Yeller style just to end his suffering, but he knew Two-Bit was right.
Although what happened to Darry was still a complete mystery, the unpleasant, yet natural conclusion for Ponyboy was that the loss of yet another close family member just a little over a year after his best friend's demise was too much for his already fragile psyche, and the kid simply took his life.
Steve knew that Ponyboy had struggled a lot after Johnny and Dallas. Soda had even confided in him at one point that he and Darry had resorted to putting him on some sort of medication that helped ease his emotional turmoil. The theory also made a lot of sense based on what he knew about the kid after almost ten years of begrudgingly being around him. Ponyboy wasn't exactly selfish, but he sometimes struggled with tunnel vision, only focusing on his own problems and wellbeing, often not considering how his actions affected others, even when they benefited himself. Although Ponyboy likely knew that his death would result in Sodapop suffering even more than he already was, he probably couldn't even bring himself to care.
And he knew Soda was quickly going down that same path. Only this time there was someone who was going to stop him in his tracks.
"Tomorrow," Steve says with a sad sigh. "I'll make a few calls, pack up some of his stuff, tell Dave he ain't coming back to work." Steve feels his eyes beginning to sting with tears as he looked back at his best friend.
"I'm sorry, buddy. We can't lose you too."
"Sodapop," a kind, yet cautious voice says as Sodapop feels a pair of gentle fingers rest on his left shoulder. "Your friends are here to visit you. Again."
"Tell them I'm not here," Sodapop says sarcastically, taking a long drag of his cigarette.
"Oh, come on, don't be like that," the nurse says with a tsk. "You've turned them down twice already this week."
"I don't want to see them," he replies sternly, dismissing her with his hand. "Thank you." Thankfully, she doesn't bother trying to reason with him further, simply walking away with a sigh.
Sodapop doesn't know when, or even if he will want to see them. They put him in his hell. A hell where they forced him to eat, sit upright, talk, basically everything that previously made him human. But he wasn't human. Not anymore. The last of his humanity faded when his little brother went to the library one night and never came back, just like Darry did a month prior. He didn't know what happened to either of them, but at this point, he didn't even care or want to know. It wouldn't have mattered anyway. They were both gone, and they were never coming back.
As the middle child, Sodapop never knew a life without brothers. Darry was there from the start, and although Ponyboy arrived after him, some of his earliest memories were of Ponyboy as a baby. Selfishly, Sodapop always hoped he'd be the first of them to die, that way he'd never have to live life without them and experience this type of pain and sorrow. Their parents dying, although a huge tragedy, was nothing compared to this. It was expected that his parents wouldn't be in his life forever, but his brothers, they were supposed to be with him his entire life. They were supposed to be each other's best man at their weddings, barbecue together on weekends, fight over who was going to host Christmas, become Uncle Darry, Pony, and Soda.
But now, they were gone. None of that was going to happen. He was going to die alone in an empty house that was once filled with joy. Or worse, he'd die here. Rotting away in some rickety chair, being force fed jello and medication that only made him feel numb, surrounded by zombies that were dumped here mainly because they had become too much for their loved ones to handle.
No, he wouldn't let that happen.
He can't.
Sodapop snuffs out his cigarette on the ashtray before slowly standing from the chair. The nurse on staff, nor the orderly pay him any mind as he walks out of the room and into the hall. Unlike most people here, he wasn't considered a risk due to his compliance and lack of aggression, so even though he wasn't supposed to be walking around without any supervision, they probably figured it wouldn't do any harm.
Sodapop walks down the hall, looking over his shoulder before opening a door on his right and entering a small room he had discovered by mistake while wandering the halls one night. The room was bare, the only thing in there were a handful of bed frames that were beyond repair and a couple bins of soiled gowns and scrubs that did nothing to help the dank, musty smell.
But there was also a window.
The only window in this entire place that wasn't reinforced by metal bars.
Sodapop doesn't care how the glass slices open his hand as he punches through it with as much force as he could muster. He hops up on one of the nearby bed frames and squeezes his body out of the small opening, planning to fall head first into the pavement below that would surely kill him instantly.
Except, it doesn't.
Sodapop slowly peels open his eyes and is met with nothing but vastness