"Here," Pony said a week later. We were at the drive-in theatre. A girl lay back against my arm and occasionally commented about the movie. Pony had brought Annalise, but he was too much of a gentleman to touch her.

He plopped a notebook down on my lap. "What am I supposed to do with this, eat it?"

"Write in it," Pony said.

I scoffed, "Thanks for the snack, kid. Now run along to go stare lovingly in Annalise's tits."

Pony spluttered and left with only a glare in my direction. The girl in the crook of my arm took the notebook and began flipping through it. The pages were blank, devoid even of the blue and pink lines I recognized from my years in school.

"That Curtis boy is a little weird," She said. I rolled my eyes in the direction of the screen so she couldn't see. Just because I had made fun of Pony didn't mean she or anyone else could.

Instead of saying anything, I just poked her in the ribs. She giggled and allowed my hand to move a little further up. Adipose tissue. Hydrolysis of triglycerides in adipose tissue can release fatty acids. Free fatty acids convert to ketone bodies in the liver. God, what poor fucker can't even enjoy groping a pretty girl without random shit getting in the way, I thought as I took another swig of beer.

My brain worked well when it was exhausted. When all it could possibly focus on was bed, sore muscles, and letting gravity pull my lids down. I had just worked an eight hour shift, so I should have been tired. Unfortunately, that didn't seem to be the case.

Darry had asked me to pick Ponyboy up from school today, probably only because I was bothering him at his work. Ponyboy was perfectly capable of walking home alone or with Johnny, even if he had gotten jumped a few times. I didn't think it was a bad lesson to learn, but Darry had a point: Pony couldn't and wouldn't fight even to save his own skin.

I lit a cigarette outside the school as I stood right next to the "No Smoking" sign. From within the building, a tinny bell sounded and then the rush of students like a dammed stream broke through the doors. Pony grabbed onto my arm as the current of high school kids washed over us.

"Can you come with me? I think I left my science textbook in the lab."

I frowned, "Can't you just run and get it? I'll wait here."

"Just come with me," Pony ordered, the way he used to when he was a little kid and didn't understand that he wasn't in charge. I did not miss that attitude. But I followed anyway, grumbling and walking purposefully slowly.

The chemistry lab was just as dingy as I remembered it, but the teacher had apparently changed since I took this class. She was a young woman with all the determined pep and poorly disguised panic of a new teacher. When Pony entered the room, she smiled and rose from her desk.

"Hello, you must be Keith Matthews."

I pretended not to hear her as I stared sullenly at the ground. I heard Pony close the door behind us, and I suddenly had the urge to run.

"Two-Bit," Pony corrected the teacher. "This is Ms. Rosie."

I nodded vaguely at her as I took in my surroundings. If we had been on the first floor, I would have jumped out of a window. I still had a well-honed sense of when a teacher was about to try to have a heart-to-heart with me.

But to my surprised, Ms. Rosie just said, "Two-Bit, do you mind if I speak with Ponyboy for a minute? You can go into the back room if you like, I just want to speak with your friend about his last test."

I gladly entered the back room and closed the door behind me so that Pony and Ms. Rosie's voices were nothing more than the drone of flies. I had expected 'the back room' to be an office. I remembered it being one with the previous teacher when I went here. But now the black tables were covered in chemicals of all colors and forms.

Without any guilt, I began playing with them without a goal in mind really. My mind hummed like a waking machine and supplied me with names and properties I thought I had suppressed. There was the universal indicator and the titration buret. My eyes landed on a vacuum flask and I felt a foreign excitement light within me at the sight. It was more euphoric than even the first time I had been drunk at twelves years old.

I began working, forgetting that Pony and Ms. Rosie were talking in the other room. Forgetting everything except the workspace in front of me and the blissful running of my mind, like the smooth engine of a german car.

"Incredible," Someone said.

I dropped a graduated cylinder of 1 molar hydrochloric acid on my foot. "Jesus lady, warn a fella next time," I grumbled.

"What are you making, Keith?"

I recognized this for the trap it was. I glared at Pony. So, Darry, the fucking prick-piece-of-shit had told Pony that my brain was as fried as an egg.

"With all due respect Ms. Rosie," I said, already moving toward the door, "Fuck you and whatever games you're trying to play."

"Two-Bit, wait," she called after me, but I was already sprinting down the stairs and out the door.

I wasn't surprised the Pony caught me. Darry never should have let him run track, in my opinion. He tagged me on the shoulder and pulled me around to face him.

"Two-Bit," he admonished, "You shouldn't have said that to Ms. Rosie. She's real nice."

"And you shouldn't've gone tattling to your teacher about me. What did you think was going to happen, you dumbass?"

"I don't know. I thought maybe you wanted a little...intellectual stimulation."

I laughed. I started to retort, then just kept laughing. Pony backed up nervously. I knew I was laughing for too long. It wasn't normal anymore, and I was almost crying, if I'm being honest. It had been almost 24 hours since I had had a drink, since I slept at the Curtis's last night, can you blame me?

"Two-Bit, are you ok?"

As I stopped laughing, I realized nothing had ever been less funny. "No, Pony, these are not the actions of someone who is 'ok'. Would you like a look in my brain? Take a look and see if I need any intellectual stimulation. Would you like to hear the first ten chapters of Jane Eyre? I read it once. Want to see the proof of euler's equation? Want to know the shape of a caffeine molecule? Or melanin? Or how about nicotine? S'io credesse che mia risposta fosse A persona che mai tornasse al mondo,Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse. Ma percioche giammai di questo fondo Non torno vivo alcun-"

My cheek hit the pavement. The pain was welcome. I wanted to beat my fists against the ground like a toddler and scream until my vocal chords fell from my throat. Pony was shaking me and saying my name. I continued to mutter. My brain was like a record on high speed. And the needle had finally skittered off the track. I had finally lost it.

"Two-Bit, let's go," Soda said. He and Steve pulled under my arms. My head was splitting open. My brain was on fire. I was fucking dying.

"What language is he speaking?" I heard Steve ask.

"No idea. Two-Bit, can you hear us? God, what the fuck did he take, Pony?"

"I-I don't know! I didn't see him take any drugs, but I lost him for a minute-"

"Calm yourself, Pony. He just needs to sleep it off."

"I don't know, Soda. Should we take him to the hospital?"

"Fuck, Steve, he ain't rich. His Mama can't afford a hospital bill! He'd kill us, anyway, then we'd really need a hospital. Let's just get him inside. Get the door."

Then there was a soft pillow under my head. My brain pulsed against my skull. It was sickening. I was going to be sick. I was going to die. Holy fuck, I didn't want to die-I puked all over the Curtis's rug.

"Ew, Two-Bit," Steve complained.

"Move aside, guys," Darry said. Darry. Focus on Darry, I told myself. He can fix this.

I realized my eyes were closed and opened them a bit, though the light was like a knife. Darry looked revolted as he stared down at me.

"Two-Bit, tell me right now honestly, what did you take. Heroine? Meth? I think you're suffering from an overdose. You have to tell me."

I know I said words. I know sound left my mouth, but it must've had no meaning, because Darry just shook his head in disappointment. Then the seizures began. I remembered them from when I was a kid, but they had never been this bad. It felt like a lightning storm in my head. I should have recognized the symptoms of an attack earlier, to be honest.

The thing with seizures is they never end. Somewhere, there is an alternate reality where I am still in a seizure. It's this weird mixture of aware and dead-to-the-world. Thoughts like "there is nothing after life" floated through my head, clear as day, and then my body demanded my brain's attention with another earth shattering tremor. It went on for years, I swear.

But then it ended. It ended, but I was afraid every second that it would come back. Yeah, I was fucking sobbing, sue me. I curled around my puddle of vomit and cried, wondering how this day had gone so horribly wrong. Wasn't it just today that I had met Pony's hot teacher?

"Two-Bit," Soda said carefully. Darry pulled the vomit covered pillow from underneath my head. "Are you awake? Can you hear us?"

I nodded, wiping the tears from my face and attempting to regain control over my emotions. I was a fucking coward.

"Are you in pain?" Darry said.

I shook my head. It was bad enough that I had cried and vomited and spoken in tongues in front of the gang. I wasn't about to admit that I couldn't handle a little pain. Shit, Dally didn't even tell us when he got stabbed in the gut one time.

"Liar," Darry accused. "What's wrong? How did this happen?"

I shook my head. Not refusal, but confusion. "I don't know," I croaked.