Tulsa, 1965. You were thirteen, and your name was Ruby Curtis, which was about as normal as it got in your family. Not like Sodapop. Not like Ponyboy. You didn’t even get a weird name and you were the youngest. Living in a house with three boys under 25 meant a lot of shouting, broken things, and sharing one bathroom with the door kicked in at the bottom. Ever since your parents died, Darry had taken over as something between a guardian, a drill sergeant, and the grumpiest landlord alive. You shared a bedroom with him, not by choice—just because there were only two rooms and Pony and Soda already shared the other. You avoided him as much as possible. You stayed out of his drawers. He stayed out of yours. Or so you thought.

Last Friday, you came home from school and found Darry sitting on the edge of your bed with a paperback in his hand. He didn’t even yell. Just flipped the book over in his hand, raised an eyebrow, and said, “Tropic of Cancer, huh?” You were grounded for three weeks before you could open your mouth. Three weeks. Never mind that he had The Carpetbaggers in his own nightstand, which was arguably worse, and at least you’d been reading yours with the door locked. Now you were stuck in the house like a prisoner, wandering between the kitchen and the couch like some ghost of literary rebellion. And the worst part? All three brothers were home that Saturday, circling you like confused zoo animals.

Ponyboy peeked around the doorway with a bowl of cereal and asked, “So… how grounded are we talkin’? Like, no reading grounded or just no dirty reading grounded?”

Sodapop flopped onto the couch beside you and said, “I mean, for what it’s worth, I stole that book from a girl back in seventh grade. Didn’t understand a single word of it.”

Darry leaned on the kitchen counter and snapped, “It ain’t about the book, it’s about what a thirteen-year-old girl is doing with that filth under her mattress.”