The Outsiders: Book Two

Bonus Chapter! -Red's POV

Okay, this is a longer chapter. You don't have to read this, it isn't essential to understanding the plot, but it helps shed some light on certain things and offers a new perspective.

As soon as I heard a voice, I turned to it, wielding the weapon I had so masterfully crafted—a piece of glass, with medical tape on one end as a grip. Pretty clever, I thought.

The person on the other end of my shard held up his hands in surrender. “Sorry, didn't mean to scare you,” he said in a somewhat calm voice. I could tell I'd given him a good scare though; a calm voice wouldn't have shook that much.

“What do you want? I don't mind cutting your week into nine days, bub,” I replied, jabbing the shard towards his face.

He jerked back, and when he spoke this time, there was no pretense of calamity in his voice. “I was j-just wondering—wondering if you n-needed to b-be walked home.”

I looked at him suspiciously, saying nothing.

He laughed nervously. “I'll—I'll take that as a no. Is there anywhere you need to go?”

I lowered my glass “knife” slowly. “Yeah. Tulsa.”

“Come again?”

“I need to go to Tulsa,” I said slowly. “I need to find some people there.”

“Isn't that a bit—”

I held up the glass again. “Tulsa or get the hell outta my way.”

He gulped. “Well, I can't just leave a pretty girl alone in the street. Tulsa it is,” he laughed nervously.

I beamed. “Great.”

~

I was so glad to get out of that car. It smelled like a place someone used for all their bodily functions, which you can probably guess wasn't a pleasant smell. We had parked in a lot next to a gas station called the DX, and left.

“So, uh...where do you need to be?” He asked as we walked.

“The east side.”

He looked puzzled. “But that's supposedly the bad side of the city.”

I nodded. “I know. But that's where my brother supposedly lived, so I'm going to find him.”

“You said 'lived'.”

“That's because I'll be surprised if his stupidity didn't kill him, or end him up in prison.”

“You don't seem too keen on him.”

I sighed. “Well, he's actually really smart. Too smart for his own good. And he likes to show it off, by letting everyone know he's smart enough to be stupid and get away with it.

“Why did he leave?”

“He and Mother didn't get along. It's complicated.”

“Oh. You don't act like a lady, you know that?”

I raised an eyebrow. “When did I ever claim I was a lady?”

He smiled to himself. “Never, I guess. I've just never met a girl who carries a homemade blade.”

“It's not homemade. I made it in an alley good and proper.”

He grinned. “Touché.”

We walked for a long while, until the surrounding neighborhood looked particularly shabby and beaten around, like an old tire that someone had left in the elements for a long time. A shady-looking lady stood on the opposite street corner, wearing a skimpy outfit and watching us with her eyes narrowed.