Finally, between sobs, Johnny managed to gasp out his story. He had been hunting our football to practice a few kicks when a blue Mustang had pulled up beside the lot. There were four Socs in it. They had caught him and one of them had a lot of rings on his hand— that’s what had cut Johnny up so badly. It wasn’t just that they had beaten him half to death— he could take that. They had scared him. They had threatened him with everything under the sun. Johnny was high-strung anyway, a nervous wreck from getting belted every time he turned around and from hearing his parents fight all the time. Living in those conditions might have turned someone else rebellious and bitter; it was killing Johnny. He had never been a coward. He was a good man in a rumble. He stuck up for the gang and kept his mouth shut good around cops. But after the night of the beating, Johnny was jumpier than ever. I didn’t think he’d ever get over it. Johnny never walked by himself after that. And Johnny, who was the most law-abiding of us, now carried in his back pocket a six-inch switchblade. He’d use it, too, if he ever got jumped again. They had scared him that much. He would kill the next person who jumped him. Nobody was ever going to beat him like that again. Not over his dead body…
I HAD NEARLY forgotten that Cherry was listening to me. But when I came back to reality and looked at her, I was startled to find her as white as a sheet.
“All Socs aren’t like that,” she said. “You have to believe me, Ponyboy. Not all of us are like that.”
“Sure,” I said.
“That’s like saying all you greasers are like Dallas Winston. I’ll bet he’s jumped a few people.”
I digested that. It was true. Dally had jumped people. He had told us stories about muggings in New York that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. But not all of us were that bad.
Cherry no longer looked sick, only sad. “I’ll bet you think the Socs have it made.
The rich kids, the West-side Socs. I’ll tell you something, Ponyboy, and it may come as a surprise. We have troubles you’ve never even heard of. You want to know something?”
She looked me straight in the eye. “Things are rough all over.”
“I believe you,” I said. “We’d better get back out there with the popcorn or Two- Bit’ll think I ran off with his money.”
We went back and watched the movie through again. Marcia and Two-Bit were hitting it off fine. Both had the same scatterbrained sense of humor. But Cherry and Johnny and I just sat there, looking at the movie and not talking. I quit worrying about everything and thought about how nice it was to sit with a girl without having to listen to her swear or to beat her off with a club. I knew Johnny liked it, too. He didn’t talk to girls much. Once, while Dallas was in reform school, Sylvia had started hanging on to Johnny and sweet talking him and Steve got hold of her and told her if she tried any of her tricks with Johnny he’d personally beat the tar out of her. Then he gave Johnny a lecture on girls and how a sneaking little broad like Sylvia would get him into a lot of trouble. As a result, Johnny never spoke to girls much, but whether that was because he was scared of Steve or because he was shy, I couldn’t tell.
I got the same lecture from Two-Bit after we’d picked up a couple of girls downtown one day. I thought it was funny, because girls are one subject even Darry thinks I use my head about. And it really had been funny, because Two-Bit was half crocked when he gave me the lecture, and he told me some stories that about made me want to crawl under the floor or something. But he had been talking about girls like Sylvia and the girls he and Dally and the rest picked up at drive-ins and downtown; he never said anything about Socy girls. So I figured it was all right to be sitting there with them. Even if they did have their own troubles. I really couldn’t see what Socs would have to sweat about— good grades, good cars, good girls, madras and Mustangs and Corvairs— Man, I thought, if I had worries like that I’d consider myself lucky.
I know better now.