Tana sat in the booth next to her friends, all of them sipping strawberry milkshakes and three out of the four talking about how cute Bryan and Brad and Craig and Joel were. While Katie, June, and Lisa all gushed about boys, all Tana could think about was one guy in particular.

Marcus.

His dreamy green eyes; his plump, pink lips; his huge bicep muscles; the way he held her in the bedroom; and the way he absolutely broke her heart. He'd called her names, told her she wasn't ever going to be good enough, and then he made out of town with some broad because he'd graduated and Tana was still a junior.

And no matter how much her heart ached after the things Marcus had said to her, she was still in love with him.

Tana found herself staring out the window of the diner, her eyes settling on a red Bel Aire. She imagined Marcus leaning against it, smoking a cigarette and waiting for her to come outside so they could drive around until the movie over at the Nightly Double started. She imagined them making out in the front seat and slowly moving into the back.

And then she blinked.

And it wasn't Marcus standing there, but that greaser named Keith Mathews, who everyone called Two-Bit for some reason.

And next to him was a face she never wanted to see again, but somehow kept finding in the crowds around town that day; no matter where she went, no matter what she was doing, he was always around.

Dallas Winston was yelling about something and Two-Bit was just laughing like it was some funny bit on Red Skelton.

Tana couldn't seem to take her eyes off the situation. There was just something about those greasers that made her jealous. She didn't quite know what it was, but maybe it was the fact that they could bar crawl and start fights and cause trouble and none of their friends judged.

If Tana so much as had chipped nail polish, that was the end of it.

And Tana was tired of it. She hated always wearing dresses and she constantly wondered if pants were any better. Tana had a wide range of car knowledge that she couldn't do anything with. Because a social girl knowing anything about mechanics was just unheard of. It was like a law or something.

Tana got everything her heart desired: a vanity full of makeup and fancy perfume; a closet full of clothes and shoes; a whole collection of bags. She had the whole second level of her family's two-story house all to herself.

And yet, Tana didn't care about any of it.

How are people so happy with all this stuff when they basically have no one? Sure, Tana had friends. But none of them were real friends. None of them got her. The only reason she hung out with most of them was that all their dads worked for her dad at his law firm. David Thompson was a very successful lawyer in Tulsa and he brought home huge checks from cases all the time. David was also really good at stocks and bonds. The family was very well off.

It was like every other thing out of her father's mouth was how much money General Motors was making.

Tana owned her own car: a pretty little baby blue colored Corvette. Yep, the kind with the convertible top. She'd seen how other socs and greasers gawked at it. Although she had preferred that gorgeous red Thunderbird—which her father laughed at, as he was more of a Chevy man, not a Ford guy—she was still in love with her car and how sleek and cool it made her feel. Tuff, the greasers called it, which is apparently different from tough. She'd heard them talking down at the DX—which she mostly only went to because Sodapop Curtis worked there and he was an absolute doll, for a greaser.

There were a few greasers that weren't all that bad but, for the most part, all they wanted to do was cause trouble. But that didn't go to say that the people she hung around didn't cause trouble, too. She knew her people always jumped their people. They did it for kicks; they did it because they could. That was mostly why she didn't like a lot of the guys around her. As much as she didn't like the greasers, she also didn't mind them and Tana didn't think they necessarily deserved to get jumped as often and as badly as they did.

"Tana," said June, her voice slightly raised. For a small girl, June was surprisingly the loudest of all four of them. Tana, being the tallest, was the quietest. It wasn't that she didn't have anything to say, she just didn't have the right thing to say.

Tana turned her attention to June, her fiery red hair looking like someone had caught her head on fire. June's brown eyes blazed into Tana's bright blue ones, the look on her face nothing but confusion.

"What?" she asked.

"Why were you staring at Dallas Winston?" Katie asked, her face contorting into something only relatable to disgust. She made facial reactions to match everything she said. She was a very expressive person, even if extremely passive aggressive. Her black hair was as dark as coal but shinier than a new pair of shoes. Katie always seemed to be radiating with light. Warm light when she was happy or excited and very cool, mellow light when she was sad or angry. Tana could read Katie like an open book.

"I wasn't," she said. "I was just spacing out."

"What's with you?" asked Lisa, her curly brown hair pulled back by a clip. Tana always thought Lisa was the prettiest of them all. She could pull off any lipstick color, whether it be cherry red-- Lisa's preferred shade-- or a light brown color. Her eyes were an indescribable hazel. They looked blue in some light and then could turn green in a second. Lisa was the kind of girl that knew she was pretty but didn't really care to bring it up. When everyone knew, there was no point in making reminders.

"What do you mean?" Tana asked, blinking a few times.

Lisa sighed like she had little patience with Tana. The other girls continued to stare at her as well.

"You've been acting weird all day," June commented, flicking a thick piece of red hair behind her.

Tana thought back to the previous night when she had attempted the train dodge. Attempted. Her body had gone rigid with fear and yet she was not afraid. And then Dallas had shoved her out of the way. She still had the bruises and her body was still sore from how hard she'd hit the ground.

"Are you insane? You're going to get yourself killed doing shit like that."

Tana didn't know why he cared. Dallas Winston didn't care about anyone but himself. So why was he so concerned? And why was he there that night? She'd purposely gone out of her way to stay out of town for her attempted train dodge. And yet there Dallas was, like some guardian angel.

Tana had a thought. Was Dallas her angel? Or was it just sheer dumb luck that he'd been walking around? Whatever it was, maybe Tana owed the greaser a 'thank you' and an apology for being such a stuck up asshole to him. To be fair, though, he was Tulsa's biggest asshole.

Tana realized she'd spaced out again and snapped back to life, her attention going from the salt shaker to her friends.

"I'm sorry. I just don't feel well. I think I'm getting my period," she said. The girls nodded in understanding. What not many people knew about Tana was that she was the best liar this side of Tulsa. Her poker face was outstanding and no one, not even her, knew how she pulled off the tales she told. They were incredibly stupid, as well.

A few months before, Tana had gotten caught sneaking in through her bedroom window after coming home well past curfew. She'd been at a party. When her mother had asked where she'd been, all Tana could think of was,

"I fell down a manhole."

And her mother just shrieked, not even caring her daughter wasn't even wet and was clearly lying.

Maybe she wasn't even a good liar. Maybe the people around her were just that clueless.

"Aunt Flo is the worst," June agreed, the others nodding along with sympathetic looks. The girls went back to their gossiping about Craig, who's hair they described as blonde cotton candy.

The only thing Tana could focus on while her friends went on and on about the guys they were interested in was how bad she wanted to run away. All of this was just too much and Tana had had her fill.