♡ ꜰᴏʀᴇᴠᴇʀ ɪꜱɴ'ᴛ ꜰᴏʀᴇᴠᴇʀ ♡

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I STARED INTO MY REFLECTION, nothing but a scared little girl in a white blouse and pencil skirt.

The girl in the mirror was someone I was familiar with but someone I didn't enjoy meeting: she was unsure, paranoid, terrified.

Her auburn beach waves cascaded down to her waist, the top strands pulled back and held together by a bejeweled pin in the back of her head. Though I'd seen these waves many times before, now they seemed unfamiliar, as if they weren't really mine.

And they weren't mine, I told myself, they were hers. And as long as I looked in that mirror, that could've been true.

My momentary peace was disturbed by a knock on the door that broke into my thoughts, making my head snatch towards the sound.

In walked Darry, dressed in a green and white suit and tie, his hair clean and slicked back. Not with grease, probably some old gel he had but hadn't used in years. We were to look decent, and hair grease made us look wild and unruly, like we didn't take care of ourselves.

That's what the world thought, anyways. Not us.

"Ready?" He asked, his eyes showing me just how nervous he was through his put-together facade.

"Yeah," I nodded, my voice quiet, "I'll be out in a sec."

He gave me a short nod before turning out of my room and shutting the door.

I turned back towards the mirror. That girl — she was just like him. A nervous wreck encased inside a nicely-dressed and well-groomed frame.

That girl was me.

I snapped out of my daze and reached for the small perfume bottle on the dresser in front of the mirror. Rosemary and lavender — calming, yet pungent with the confidence of someone with a story to tell.

And I had a story to tell that day, whether I liked it or not.

I dabbed a few drops onto my wrists and then my neck, straightening out my blouse before taking a deep, shaky breath and plucking the black clutch off of my bed. I looked over the room one last time as I exited, as if — for some reason — I would never see it again.

I closed the door and followed my brothers outside to the truck.

The day was a day I had been asking for for weeks: sunny, but not humid. Yet it seemed that all that I asked for was too much at that moment, the sun too overbearing, like a tyrant breathing down your neck, preying on your every mistake.

Sodapop and Ponyboy were dressed nicely, too. Soda was dressed in a white and tan button-up with the collar flipped up underneath a burlap-colored, dressy zip-up that I had never seen before. He also wore khaki-colored slacks and dress shoes that were shiny with little use. It was odd to see him in such fancy attire, but it made him seem more mature.

I guess that was the point.

Pony dressed similarly, with a plain white button-up underneath a blue jacket. They both had their hair slicked back like Darry's, and, for a second, I thought they could all pass as Socs.

Well, maybe not Socs, but at least middle class. Maybe then, the jury would actually listen to us, even though it was Greaser against Greaser instead of Greaser against...well, anybody else, really.

I gazed into my lap as we drove, watching my hands fiddle with each other anxiously. Every breath I took was an attempt to be calm, yet each time they seemed to get shorter and more frequent.

Suddenly, I felt someone's hand on my arm and looked up to see Soda smiling at me gently, his dark brown eyes twinkling with a mix of hope and sadness. "Hey," he said softly, "it's gonna be okay. We'll be right there with you."