A/N: This story parallels my other story, Epiphany, but it is narrated from Darry's point of view rather than Scout's. You might want to read epiphany before this, but it should still be able to stand alone if you don't. As I wrote epiphany I felt like I wanted Darry to be able to have a voice too, so I decided to write a parallel story from his POV. I considered switching POV within the story but felt it would be too disjointed. So I decided to tell the whole story again from Darry's side.

I own no characters from the book. Thanks for the loan, S.E. Hinton!

I don't think I ever had any idea how quickly a life could change. One minute I was in college, living the life of a college freshman, playing on the football team, and the next minute everything was turned completely upside down. It still seems like a movie, a documentary of someone else's life when I think about it, how in just one night my family was changed forever.

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It was a Thursday night, October second, my sister Scout's twelfth birthday, which also happened to be the day before my parents' anniversary. We were having a special birthday dinner for my sister, and my parents had plans to go out after dinner. On their actual anniversary, Friday, I had a football game. They never missed one of my games. I was a freshman wide receiver at the University of Tulsa, following in the footsteps of my dad. He said I was already better, as a freshman, than he ever was, but from what I hear, he was pretty good. He had made conference all-star his junior and senior years. Usually if I had a game the whole family showed up; my brothers and sister as well as all of my brothers' friends who always were hanging around. It was kind of cool, like having my own fan club.

Besides my family, there was always a horde of girls who hung around the games, seemingly determined to get their very own football-player boyfriend. Honestly they just never seemed sincere to me. They acted like they wanted to be with me just because I was on the team – they never seemed to really care who I really was or what I was all about. At least my high school girlfriends had cared enough to get to know me. So I never went out with them. Usually after my games I would just come home and talk with Dad and my brother Pony about how it had gone. As for my other brother Soda, he usually had hardly even seen the game – he spent most of the time flirting with those very girls I refused to ask out. He didn't have so much luck, though – I guess college girls wouldn't lower themselves to the level of dating high-school boys.

It was funny watching my family at my games. My Mom and Dad sat in the reserved section with the other players' families, trustees, and other people a lot more rich than we were. Soda usually took off after the girls, and Ponyboy usually watched the game studiously, working his way through a pack of cigarettes. Scout was funny; she can't sit still. She was everywhere, checking out the cheerleaders, running up and down the sidelines, hanging out with her friend and our neighbor Ben. She was cute- the other guys little brothers and sisters liked her and were friendly toward her. There was nothing not to like about anybody in my family, really, I guess.

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Scout was usually the last one to wake up each morning. Generally my brothers and I would all be awake and our Mom was already fixing breakfast when she would finally send one of us in to wake her up. We were brutal, as older brothers usually are – we would pounce on her, scare her awake, and tickle her into consciousness. I don't know why we felt we had to torture her – she woke us up occasionally and was usually gentle about it, but… well, we gave her a hard time. On her birthday, though, our Dad went in to wake her up. There was no screaming, as there usually was when one of us awakened her to tickling, but there was laughing. Scout came out to breakfast looking happier than I could remember seeing her in a while. She had been put up a grade and was having a hard time adjusting – mostly, I think, to not being in the same grade anymore as Ben, her human security blanket. They had been inseparable since they were kids. As Scout's brother, Ben was like an extra pair of eyes for me … I completely appreciated him, because he looked out for Scout as well as any of her actual brothers did. She counted on him, and since being promoted up a grade due to her academics, she was missing him something awful. I think she felt like getting put up a grade was like a punishment for being smart. Both she and Pony were sharp as tacks. Pony had been promoted too. As for Soda, School was not his thing, and his grades pretty accurately reflected that.

I went to classes and practice, but came straight home. Birthdays were a big deal in our family. I had memories of my brothers being little – but as for Scout, I actually remembered her being born. I was seven, in second grade, when Dad called with the news. We were staying at home with our neighbor, Mrs. Cummings (Ben's mom) watching us. The funny thing is, Ben himself was just about three months old when Scout was born. I remember standing by the phone, amazed by Ben, when Mrs. Cummings answered the phone, him in her arms.

"Hello?" She listened on the other end.

"Oh, Darrel, that is great! Congratulations!" A pause. "Of course!"

She turned to me.

"Darry, it's your dad." She handed the phone to me.

"Hello?"

"Darry"

It was my Dad.

"Daddy? Is Mommy OK?" Last time I had seen her she had not been so happy about being in labor.

"She's great, baby. And you have a baby sister now."

"A sister?" That was something I was totally not prepared for. Everybody had thought we were going to have another boy, including me.

"That's right, Darry, Samantha Scout, your new sister. Scout."

I was still shocked. "Scout? She's a girl?" Are you sure?"

"I'm sure, buddy. You have a little sister."

I was so surprised. It had seemed like my parents had been resigned to having only boys. The pride on their faces when they brought her home had been priceless. And we had all handled her with kid gloves, until she started to get older and we realized girls could be pretty tough, too. She did a lot of biting in those early years, just to show us who was boss.

And here she was, twelve. I came home from practice and she and I went out into the backyard to play catch. She didn't really get or care about the actual rules of football… she always just wanted to play catch. I didn't mind - I had been showing her how to throw for a long time and she knew how to hit a target and almost always put the ball exactly where I wanted it. She was actually better at throwing catch practice than some of the guys on the team. Then we would turn it around and she would crack me up, the way she would dive for the ball and put up with all of the crash landings she endured. For a girl she was real tough. But I guess that is inevitable, growing up getting roughed up by three older brothers.

Once we went inside, she stayed in the kitchen with our mom fixing dinner while I stayed out in the living room with my dad and brothers. Dad was really into the logistics of my team – as a former player, he liked to know about all the plays we had running. We were still talking about my game the next night, as Pony and Soda fought over a poker game, when Mom called us for Scout's birthday dinner.

She was so funny. She blushed like crazy when we sang happy birthday. For sure, she is used to a lot of noise, but she turned red like a Carribean sunset when all eyes in our family were on her. Usually she is kinda quiet, not so much shy but just observant, listening and taking in what's happening around her. All I could think about was her as a tiny little pink bundle coming home from the hospital, all swaddled up. And now she was blowing out the candles, looking so much like a miniature copy of my mom. Her dark hair, blue eyes – she looked just like mom, and I was sure she would grow to be a beauty just like her. I supposed in a few years my brothers and I would be sitting in our living room intimidating the crap out of some guy who had come to pick her up for a date.

Finally it was time for our parents to go out – god knows, they deserved a night out – and they tucked Scout in as my brothers and I watched some shoot-em-up western on TV. I could gear them tucking her in, and eventually they came into the living room.

"Pony, Soda, you should get to bed soon too," they said. "Darry, you don't have to wait up for us, honey. We might be late."

"I won't," I said. I had an early class the next day. Mom and Dad hugged us all goodbye and headed out. After a few hours I sent Pony and Soda off to bed and headed in to check on Scout. Habit, I guess, from so many years of babysitting her.

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I quietly opened her door. She was curled up in a ball at the head of her bed. She slept like a cat. Yet somehow, by the morning, she was always completely tangled in her covers. That's why she was so easy to torment in the morning – she was basically imprisoned in her own sheets.

"Dar…" she mumbled. I don't know how she knew it was me.

"Hey, birthday girl… Go to sleep!" I said, as I went over to shut her window. A chilly wind was coming in.

"Thanks… I was cold but I didn't know it yet," she said. I knew she was still half asleep, and I laughed softly. Again I thought of that little pink bundle, and how life goes by so fast.

"Sleep tight Scout."

"'kay. 'Night." She turned and snuggled into the pillow. I looked at her for a minute, wishing time would slow down a little. I needed a little more time before those boyfriends started showing up on the doorstep.

"'Night." I shut the door behind me.

A/N: Please review. Should I keep going with Darry's POV? The first chapter is always the hardest!