The Outsiders

by S.E. Hinton

You’d better wise up, Pony . . . you get tough like me and you don’t get hurt. You look out for yourself and nothin’ can touch you . . .”

“Stay gold, Ponyboy. Stay gold . . .”

I knew he would be dead, because Dally Winston wanted to be dead and he always got what he wanted.

I’d never get past the part where the Southern gentlemen go riding into sure death because they are gallant. Southern gentlemen with big black eyes in blue jeans and T-shirts, Southern gentlemen crumpling under street lights.

A few guys from school had dropped by to see me; I have quite a few friends at school even if I am younger than most of them and don’t talk much. But that’s what they are—school friends, not buddies.

I knew as well as he did that if you got tough you didn’t get hurt. Get smart and nothing can touch you . . .

Darrel Shaynne Curtis, Jr. Soda Patrick Curtis. Ponyboy Michael Curtis.

Johnny and Dallas were our buddies, too, but you don’t just stop living because you lose someone. I thought you knew that by now. You don’t quit!

Instead of Darry and me pulling him apart, he’d be pulling us together.

I’ve been thinking about it, and that poem, that guy that wrote it, he meant you’re gold when you’re a kid, like green. When you’re a kid everything’s new, dawn. It’s just when you get used to everything that it’s day. Like the way you dig sunsets, Pony. That’s gold. Keep that way, it’s a good way to be.

There should be some help, someone should tell them before it was too late. Someone should tell their side of the story, and maybe people would understand then and wouldn’t be so quick to judge a boy by the amount of hair oil he wore. It was important to me.

I wondered for a long time how to start that theme, how to start writing about something that was important to me. And I finally began like this: When I stepped out into the bright sunlight from the darkness of the movie house, I had only two things on my mind: Paul Newman and a ride home . . .