The Outsiders: Before My Time Part III

When Cleaning Turns To Time Traveling

"Goldie, look at this one," Candy said, lifting a framed picture from the stack she found and blew some of the dust off. This followed with some coughing and her hand flying through the air to wave the dust away.

Candy and I have the same hair, a honey-brown that people say glistens in the sun like gold. I have Dad's eyes. Dark golden brown, a lot like my hair. Candy has Mom's eyes. By the pupil her eyes are brown and the outer edge turns to green. The green had some yellow flakes in it, and the green overpowers the brown more and more every day. Red, had very dark brown eyes, with dorky thick framed glasses that made them look bigger. Like bubbles in his head.

"What?" I asked as I threw an empty shoebox into a bag I labeled 'trash'.

"It's of Mom," she said.

"They're all of Mom." I almost rolled my eyes. Mom has kept most of the photographs she has taken of herself and her friends and family. "Are you going to help, or not?"

"I wanna see!" Red exclaimed, getting distracted from his assignment and making his way over to Candy. "There's Dad!"

"Yeah," Candy said and she let him hold the photo.

"There's a bunch of other kids in here," he said, rubbing his thumb on the glass to make the picture clearer. "Who are they?"

"That one looks like Uncle Dally," Candy said.

Uncle Dally is from my dad's side. I really don't think we are blood related, because when I asked Dad how we were related to him, he didn't give me a straight answer. He could have been my grandpa or grandmas brother or friend or something, but he was still our uncle. I didn't get to know him very well, he died when I was two-years-old. About sixteen years ago.

"Whoop-dee-do," I said with an eye roll to show my annoyance.

"No, Goldie," Candy said in a tone more concerned than excited. "It's Uncle Dally."

"I got that," I said sarcastically.

"He is Dad and Mom's age in this photo."

"Okay?" I said as I grabbed some broken toys and threw them in the garbage bag.

"He is in the photo with Mom and Dad."

That part caught my attention. I turned to look at her, she had the photograph in her hand and she leaned over to hand it to me. I could see it in her face that she was seriously disturbed.

"Don't sell me a dog," I said.

"I ain't." She shook her head and wiggled the photo in her hand. "See for yourself."

I set the bag down and headed over to Candy. I sat down beside her and grabbed the photo from her hand and studied it.

"See, there's Mom, there's Dad, and there's Dally." She pointed at our uncle with her pinky.

I recognized everyone in the picture. All my uncles. Two of them are my real uncles, Uncle Ponyboy and Uncle Darry. And I've been told that the others were really close friends with my Dad's parents, and my great-grandfather was in the photo as well. What confused me, was the close friends were much older than my parents... so why are they all the same age in this photo?