I was wishing I looked like Paul Newman--- he looks tough and I don't--- but I guess my own looks aren't so bad.

I have light-brown, almost-red hair and greenish-gray eyes.

I wish they were more gray, because I hate most guys that have green eyes, but I have to be content with what I have.

My hair is longer than a lot of boys wear theirs, squared off in back and long at the front and sides, but I am a greaser and most of my neighborhood rarely bothers to get a haircut.

I had a long walk home and no company, but I usually lone it anyway, for no reason except that I like to watch movies undisturbed so I can get into them and live them with the actors.

When I see a movie with someone it's kind of uncomfortable, like having someone read your book over your shoulder.

I'm different that way.

I mean, my second oldest brother, Soda, who is sixteen-going-on-seventeen, never cracks a book at all, and my oldest brother, Darrel, who we call Darry, works too long and hard to be interested in a story or drawing a picture, so I'm not like them.

And nobody in our gang digs movies and books the way I do.

So I loaned it.

Soda tries to understand, at least, which is more than Darry does.

But then, Soda is different from anybody; he understands everything, almost.

Like he's never hollering at me all the time the way Darry is, or treating me as if I was six instead of fourteen.

He's always happy-go-lucky and grinning, while Darry's hard and firm and rarely grins at all.

But then, Darry's gone through a lot in his twenty years, grown up too fast.