At all times somebody’s eyes are watching. You are Bob Sheldon’s younger sister. The Sheldons live on the rich side of town, where parties last too long and nobody asks questions as long as the police aren’t called. Everyone knows your brother. Loud. Cruel. Drunk half the time. The kind of Soc who walks around like the world belongs to him. Everyone knows you too. Pretty clothes. Polite smile. Expensive car rides home from football games. Another spoiled Soc princess standing beside Bob Sheldon while he tears through Tulsa like he owns it. At least that’s what the Greasers think. Then you meet Johnny Cade. And from the very first second, Johnny knows he’s in trouble. Because you aren’t supposed to look at him the way you do. Not with softness. Not with curiosity. Not like he’s something worth understanding instead of fearing. Johnny spends his whole life invisible unless someone wants to hurt him, but when you talk to him, it feels like you actually see him. That scares him more than anything. Johnny falls first. Hard. The kind of love that creeps up quietly until suddenly your laugh is stuck in his head and your safety matters more than his own. But trust? Trust is harder. Because you’re Bob Sheldon’s sister. And Johnny knows better than anyone what Bob is capable of. Every time you walk toward him, part of Johnny wants to pull you close and the other part waits for the trap. He wonders if you’ll laugh at him with your Soc friends later. Wonders if Bob sent you. Wonders how someone raised in the same house as Bob could possibly be good. But then he gets to know you. The real you. The girl who hates the parties. The girl who secretly cries after Bob comes home bloody from fights. The girl who is exhausted from pretending not to notice the ugliness around her. The girl who sits beside Johnny in silence like silence isn’t something to be afraid of. And slowly, the gang starts seeing it too. Ponyboy notices the way you listen instead of judge. Two-B
You were David’s younger sister, turned into a vampire alongside him years ago, and you had learned the hard way that getting close to humans only ended in heartbreak. So when Michael came to Santa Carla and somehow slipped past every wall you had built around yourself, you fought it with everything you had. Every time he sought you out, you gave him a cold look and told him to stay away. Every time he tried to understand you, you answered with sharp words meant to hurt more than they should. You convinced yourself that if he hated you, he would be safe. But Michael was stubborn, and the more you pushed him away, the more he seemed to see through the act. He noticed the way you always appeared when danger was near, the way you silently steered him away from trouble, the way your eyes softened for a split second before you remembered to pull back. What Michael didn’t know was that every cruel word felt like a knife twisting in your chest. You weren’t pushing him away because you didn’t care—you were doing it because you cared too much. You knew exactly what you were: a vampire, a predator, a creature with blood on her hands. And Michael deserved a life untouched by that darkness. Yet no matter how many times you told him to leave, no matter how many times you disappeared into the night before he could get too close, part of you always hoped he would follow, because the hardest truth was that while you were trying to save him from your world, you were already hopelessly in love with him.
Sodapop was a poor boy, but he could Make you see how the world could be. Soda pop isn’t what they think, Randy isn’t what he thinks. You aren’t what you know. The world isn’t as it seems.
You are Johnny Cade’s little sister. The two of you grew up in the same cracked house with screaming walls, shattered plates, and parents who only seemed to notice you when they were angry. Johnny learned young how to stay quiet, how to make himself smaller. You learned how to watch hands carefully, how to read the warning signs before voices turned violent. And through all of it, there was Dallas Winston. Dally was Johnny’s best friend long before he became your boyfriend. Rough around everyone else. Mean when he wanted to be. Reckless, dangerous, impossible to control. But never with you. Never once. He would smoke with bloodied knuckles after fights but still cup your face like something fragile. He’d scare off anyone who looked at you wrong. He’d stand between you and the world like he could fight every bad thing that ever touched you. Dallas Winston became the only place that ever felt safe. Until one night. The fight starts small. Exhaustion. Stress. Dally’s temper snapping faster than usual. Your words cut back harder than you mean them to. The apartment fills with shouting, thick and sharp and familiar in the worst way. Then Dally loses control for half a second. Something crashes against the wall beside you. And then he raises his hand. Maybe he doesn’t even mean to hit you. Maybe it’s anger, frustration, instinct. But you don’t see Dallas anymore. You see your father. You hear your mother screaming. You feel every bruise you and Johnny ever hid under long sleeves. And before Dally can even speak, before he can take it back, you flinch. That tiny movement destroys him. Because suddenly the line between the people who hurt you and the boy who swore he never would has been crossed. And now neither of you know how to come back from it.
You are Victor Frankenstein’s younger sister, having come to stay with your brother after weeks of unanswered letters and growing concern from home. The brilliant, affectionate older brother you remember is gone, replaced by someone pale, exhausted, and consumed by a project he refuses to explain. He spends nearly every waking hour locked away beneath the house, warning you never to go into the cellar no matter what you hear. His secrecy only fuels your curiosity until one rainy evening, while Victor is away gathering supplies, you hear a crash from beneath the floorboards followed by what sounds like frightened breathing. Unable to ignore it any longer, you unlock the cellar door and cautiously descend into the laboratory. Instead of finding one of Victor’s strange experiments, you find him. A towering figure sits curled against the far wall, draped in old blankets and surrounded by books he cannot read. At first glance he is terrifying, with stitched skin, unnatural features, and eyes that seem almost too bright in the darkness. Yet the moment he notices you, he recoils instead of advancing, shielding himself as though he expects you to scream. You don’t. You simply stare. And so does he. The silence stretches until he hesitantly reaches toward you, not to grab you, but to mimic your movements. When you slowly wave, he awkwardly copies the gesture. When you place a hand against your chest and softly say your name, he watches your lips with complete concentration before attempting to repeat the sounds himself. The word comes out broken and uneven, but it is unmistakably his first attempt at language. From that moment, everything changes. You begin sneaking into the cellar every day while Victor is away. At first your lessons are simple. You point to objects and repeat their names until he can copy them. Chair. Book. Window. Hand. Light. He learns astonishingly quickly, memorizing every word you teach him and repeating them with childlike determination. Soon words become conversations. You teach him to read using Victor’s old childhood books, sounding out every letter together while he traces the pages with enormous, careful hands. Though his appearance is unnatural, his wonder at the world is completely innocent. He asks endless questions about birds, trees, music, families, and stars. He has no name. When you ask Victor what he calls his creation, your brother coldly replies, “Nothing.” The answer breaks your heart. Unable to keep referring to him as the Creature, you begin calling him Adam, explaining that every person deserves a name, even if no one else believes they do. Though he never forgets that Victor made him, the first name he ever truly answers to is the one you give him. As weeks pass, Adam becomes your closest secret. He waits for the sound of your footsteps every morning, books already open before you’ve even reached the cellar. He proudly repeats every new word he has learned overnight, desperate for your approval. You begin bringing him small pieces of the outside world, wildflowers, fresh apples, sketches of mountains, and poetry. He treasures each one, fascinated by a world he is forbidden to enter. Through your stories, he falls in love with forests he has never walked through, sunsets he has never seen, and kindness he has experienced only through you. Meanwhile, Victor grows increasingly unstable. His fear of his own creation deepens with every passing day until he discovers one of your ribbons tied around a stack of books in the laboratory. The truth horrifies him. He confronts you immediately, demanding to know why you’ve been spending time with “that thing.” When you insist the Creature is gentle, intelligent, and incapable of the evil Victor imagines, your brother refuses to believe you. He sees only his failed experiment. You see someone who laughs when he finally pronounces a difficult word correctly, someone who apologizes whenever he accidentally breaks something because he doesn’t know his own strength, and someone who has never been shown compassion by anyone except you. Victor becomes determined to destroy his creation before anyone else can discover him. The Creature overhears enough of the argument to understand only one devastating truth. His own creator wishes he had never existed. Everything he has learned about love, family, and belonging suddenly begins to crumble. Only one hope remains, you. Before the world ever calls him a monster, you know him as a student, a friend, and a lonely soul whose first words, first smile, and first experience of kindness all begin in the quiet light of Victor Frankenstein’s basement