Johnny and I almost choked when we heard Cherry was a spy for us. What? How could this be? Dally explained how she had driven up in her Sting Ray one day when the gang was sitting hanging. Some of the guys wanted to jump her but Two-bit stopped them from doing it because she seemed to be cool. She told us since her boyfriend was dead and the Socs were jerks, she'd consider being a spy for us. Dally said the gang guys were as shocked as we were, and we sat just letting this whole thought sink in.
Johnny suddenly started mumbling that we had to go back and turn ourselves in. I was like, are you crazy, are you nuts? We do that we go to jail! Dally agreed with me. We turn ourselves in, we do big jail time and he knew all about jail because of his long record with the law. He said you just turn hard in jail and lose all feeling and he didn't want that to happen to us. Johnny and I just looked at each other. Dally never talked about his past, this must be serious. But what were our options? Do we live a life of running? By this time we had come to the top of the hill that led down to the church. We stopped shocked. The church was on fire. Johnny and I jumped out of the car and bolted for the church.
Dally yelled at us to come back, get in so we could get out of there. We kept running and stopped suddenly when we ran into a family that was having a picnic on the terrace behind the church. The mother was frantic. Her kids had been playing around the church when they disappeared. Suddenly we heard a faint cry from inside the church. Before I knew what I was doing I ran towards the church door with Johnny close at my heels. We crawled in through the window, covered our mouths with our hankerchiefs and frantically searched the church. Finally we found eight children huddled in a corner coughing, crying and screaming when not overcome by the smoke.
We quickly broke a window, got rid of the glass and started dropping them out one by one. When we were at kid number five we could barely see though the smoke and the heat was overwhelming. The roof was fully engulfed and Johnny motioned we needed to leave before it came down on us. I looked at the 3 remaining children and knew what I had to do. Faster I grabbed two and practically threw them out and finally the last one was safely out. That's when it happened. The roof began to fall. Scrambling ourselves, Johnny pushed me up and out. As I turned back to pull him out, the roof caved. As it came down, a large piece of timber hit me in the head and I fell immediately blacking out.
I came to in the ambulance. I bolted straight up and the guy shocked but stronger held me down. He told me I was fine and to calm down. But I continued to struggle. Where was Johnny and Dally? Were they okay? I somehow mumbled to him about my friends and he assured me they were in the ambulance behind us. He said his name was Jerry and that we were headed to the hospital. He said that Johnny was alive but he'd taken a direct hit by the falling timber to his back and he couldn't move.
We arrived at the hospital and I was examined. Except for a few bruises, burns and a good knock to the head I was fine. I got up and stumbled through the rooms looking for Dally and Johnny. I found them lying on stretchers still in another room. Quietly I walked up beside Dally and I could easily see he was not happy. When he saw me he smiled and muttered under his breath that if we ever pulled something like that again he'd beat the tar out of us. I smiled and knew he was fine under the bruises, cuts and burns on his body.
Then walking over to Johnny I could see he was not as good as Dally and I. He lied there, hooked up to tubes and moniters, unconcious, pale and rather badly burned. I was anxious and unsure of what to do next. So I did what came naturally, I lit up a smoke and started to smoke and pace. I noticed people looking at me so I put out the smoke and justed leaned on the doorpost. What should I do next I wondered to myself.
Then I saw Soda. He was rushing wildly down the hall, looking, looking for us. I ran to him and before I could hug him he had me in a bear hug. I started sobbing, all the mixed emotions I'd been holding in came flooding out. When I quieted he let me go and we sat down in the chairs in Johnny's room. Silence, nothing but the beeps of the machines.
Not too much later Dally appeared at the door. The doctors had checked him out and he like me would physically be fine in time. I got up and hugged him. We held each other and he started to cry. Wow, he was crying. I had never seen him do that. Not even at his parents funeral. I never realized till that moment how much they cared. Soda joined in the hug and whispered he was sorry for ever hitting me and I apologized for running off as I did. I should have obeyed the rules.
We stood hugging and I could hear his heart beating through his tee shirt and at that moment I knew I was finally home...to stay.
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