A/N:

I'm back bitches.

Also, I'm really digging the new cover I made for this book. It's pretty cool tbh *insert okay hand emoji*

Anyway, enjoy!!! If you like this chapter please VOTE! :)

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Sodapop picked himself off the grass. He was definitely freaking out now. There was no way in the world he'd catch his little brother, so he rushed back inside the house to tell Darry and see if he could do something.

"Darry! Something is terribly wrong with Ponyboy!"

Darry had been pacing around the kitchen, but he stopped. "What? What do you mean?"

Soda exhaled roughly. "Well, it seems to me that Ponyboy has super speed now."

"What? You mean to tell me our kid brother has super powers?"

"It sounds crazy, but ain't that the truth. He just went sprintin' down the street . . ."

Darry shook his head abruptly. "I don't believe that for a second."

"But you should. It just happened in front of my eyes," Soda said. His eyes trailed off to view the empty couch sitting in the living room. "And for another thing, I don't know where the hell Johnny is."

At that moment, he bathroom door creaked open. Darry and Soda turned their heads, and there was Johnny slowly stepping out of the bathroom, his eyes as wide as they'd ever been and his skin as pale as if he had just seen a ghost.

"Oh, there you are, Johnny," said Soda. Then he got a good look at the kid. "Hey Johnny, you ain't lookin' so good . . ."

Johnny closed the bathroom door behind him. A wave of dizziness flooded his entire body. "Uh, d-don't go in there . . . I-I just saw the scariest th-thing . . ."

Soda just stared at him, the expression on his face literally falling into his gut. "Wh-What do you mean, Johnnycake?"

Johnny inhaled nervously, his dizziness causing him to swallow hard. "I . . . I went to use the bathroom, and . . . the mirror, I . . . I-I don't know what h-happened . . ."

Without thinking, Soda rushed to the bathroom door, Johnny quickly moving out of the way, and he roughly pushed it open and turned the light on. He stood in the doorway and looked around. Everything looked fine from where he was.

Then he stepped inside and stood in front of the large mirror. He closely eyed himself and his surroundings through their reflection casted by the mirror. Again, everything looked fine.

"I don't see anything in here, Johnny," called Soda as he made his final look around. "Sure it wasn't your eyes playin' tricks on ya? C'mere Johnny, there's nothing in here to be 'fraid of," Soda assured.

Shuddering, Johnny slowly re-entered the bathroom as Darry stood in the doorway. He looked around frantically, afraid that something or someone was going to jump out at him. Johnny nervously peered his eyes toward the mirror, and they grew wide for a second before he gulped. "I-It's still there, Soda."

Confused, Soda's eyebrows slanted downward, and he turned around to see what Johnny was seeing through the mirror.

For the third time, everything looked fine. Except that Johnny's reflection was missing.

Soda's eyes nearly popped out of their sockets. He turned heads. To Johnny, to the mirror, back to Johnny, back to the mirror.

Standing in the doorway, Darry fidgeted on his feet. Sodapop suddenly looked really spooked. "What's there, Soda?" he questioned anxiously.

Nobody answered Darry. Sodapop was frozen, his eyes just glued to the mirror. Johnny was breathing uneasily-–he felt way too dizzy now. The ruckus Ponyboy had caused had stirred him awake, awake with a faint feeling in his head. And the inability to see his reflection in the mirror made his head spin even more. He could have passed out if he wanted to.

"I feel real dizzy, guys," Johnny's voice cracked suddenly as he held his head, "I . . . I-I'm just gonna go back to sleep." Nearly out of balance, he tugged himself out of the bathroom.

Johnny tripped right at the doorway, luckily Darry caught him. "Whoa! You all right there, kid? What's wrong?"

"M-My head. I can't . . . I-I need to sleep."

"You're bouta pass out, Johnny. I'll get you an aspirin."

Worried, Darry brought Johnny to the couch and laid him down. He made sure the boy took an aspirin before quickly falling into a deep slumber.

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Darry rested on his arm chair, waiting. He had left Soda standing dumb in the bathroom for almost a half hour now, and he was wondering when his brother was going to walk out soon. Neither Soda nor Johnny had told him what they had seen in the mirror-–he was getting antsy. It didn't seem like anything good, either, but the suspense was killing him. First, his little brother ran away from home with supposed "super speed" (he still didn't believe that), and then the gang's pet didn't feel well and claimed something weird happened to him in the bathroom-–that Darry still didn't know about. What was actually going on here?

A light switch flickered off and a door closed quietly. Darry raised his head. Sodapop walked in the living room and stopped at the couch. He looked down at Johnny sleeping, and calmly sighed. "He all right?" he questioned Darry.

Darry nodded. "Sleepin' off a bad headache."

Soda pursed his lips in pity and kneeled down beside the sleeping boy. He put a finger on the skin above Johnny's upper lip and below the nose, and pulled it upward to reveal some of his teeth.

Darry was puzzled. "What are you doin', Soda."

After a moment of examining, Soda did it to the other side of Johnny's mouth. "Um, just checkin' if he has fangs."

Darry cocked an eyebrow. "Now why would you be doin' a silly thing like that?"

"I'm . . . makin' sure he ain't a vampire."

That stunned the older greaser the most. "And why's that?"

Soda let go of Johnny's face and lightly rubbed the kid's arm. "'Cause I'm worried. It's really freaky, but," he looked at Darry, "he couldn't see his reflection in the mirror, Dar."

Darry blinked. "What?"

"Exactly," Soda said, leaving the sleeping boy alone and standing up. "I saw it for my own eyes, too. Stood in front of it, but no reflection. Nup. Try finding an explanation for that." He paused. "At least he ain't got no vampire teeth. Other than that, I don't know what could've-–"

"Soda! Look," Darry interrupted, hopping on his feet and pointing toward Johnny.

Soda darted his eyes for the tanned boy, but where he had been sleeping on the couch, he was no longer there.

Soda literally jumped and fell into Darry. "Oh God! Where'd he go? How didn't we hear-–"

"Sh!" Darry yelped, putting a hand in front of Soda and watching the couch. The blanket that Darry had covered Johnny with was still laid out on the couch, completely in the same position, like it was still covering something. Also, it ever so slightly moved up and down right at the spot where it had once covered Johnny's stomach.

Then, slowly, the sleeping boy reappeared in the same exact position he was in before.

Darry and Soda remained still and silent. Then, cautiously, Soda reached over and put his hand on Johnny's chest. After staying apparent for about a minute, the boy disappeared again, but Soda still felt Johnny there.

Sometimes visible and sometimes not, what was going on with little Johnny Cade? There was only one answer.

Realization hit, and Soda removed his hand from the boy and spun around to look at Darry, who was spooked out of his mind. "He's invisible!" Soda frantically whispered.

Darry's eyebrows raised. He tried to process what his brother just concluded, but to no avail. It was just too supernatural. "What?"

"I mean, it all kinda makes sense. He ain't no vampire, and he ain't no ghost 'cause he ain't dead . . . he's just got invisibility powers. And he's just learning how to control 'em." Sodapop sighed. Even for him, it was hard to believe what he was saying. "I just wanna know where he got them from."

Darry exhaled roughly and scratched his head. This was all too weird. "I don't know, Soda. Where's Ponyboy?"

"I told you, he ran away."

Darry blinked. "Oh. Right."

"Yeah . . ." Soda pursed his lips. Their kid brother was out there somewhere, but there was no way that they could possibly catch him because of his accelerated speed. They would just have to wait for Ponyboy to turn back up. "We should probably, uhmm, get back to bed, Dar. Maybe all this will clear up in the morning."

Darry sighed, "Maybe." Then he turned and walked into his room.

__________

Surprisingly, despite all the weird events that previously happened, Sodapop had a nice sleep. That is, until he woke up.

Something was different. When his eyes opened, Soda was met with a ceiling that was too dangerously close to him. He thought his vision was just blurry from having his eyes closed for so long, so he blinked multiple times. Then he moved around a little bit, and that's when he realized it.

He was in the air.

Levitating off the bed.

Before Soda could scream, a thunderous noise erupted from the other room, causing him to retain connection with the Earth's gravity and plunge back into the mattress with a loud THUMP!

"What the hell!" Soda whispered frightfully to himself. He was breathing heavily and quickly, and he turned his head to the right in hopes to see Ponyboy sleeping soundly. But his kid brother still wasn't there.

Soda sighed. "That's it. That's fucking it." He jumped out of bed and ran out of the room, calling for Darry.

Meanwhile, Darry, having just woken up, sat on his bed holding his head, staring at the wooden mess on the floor with complete bewilderment. His nightstand beside his bed, once a thick and hard piece of furniture, was now just a bunch of debris toppling the floor like building blocks. And all from just pounding his alarm off-–only this time, his normal "fist-pound" actually smashed the alarm and everything with it.

Soda swung Darry's door open, rushing inside. "Darry! I was just-–whoa! How the hell did that happen?"

"Uh," Darry was still processing how it happened, "I tried turning off my alarm . . ."

"Well what the hell did ya do? Smash it with your fist?"

Darry looked down at his right hand which was still clenched into a fist. "Apparently," he answered, though with unsureness in his voice. Then he stood up with a grumble. "I gotta clean this up before the boys come over."

"But first, I gotta tell ya, I was just-–"

"Can you tell me later, Soda?" Darry asked. "I just got up, and if you can see I already got a lot of work to do."

"I know, but get this." He took in a breath and announced bluntly, "I was just floating in the air."

Darry gave him a blank stare for a moment. Then he responded, though with a bit of sarcasm. "That's great, Soda. Dream?"

Soda shook his head. "No, it was real. I woke up and I was just floating above my bed!"

Darry sighed and began to walk towards the door, "Sometimes dreams can be really realistic, buddy."

"But this wasn't a dream!" Soda argued, turning around as Darry passed him. "And neither was your 'pound-the-alarm' incident! Don't you see? Something is going on here, and something weird, man."

"You're crazy, Sodapop," Darry said walking out of the room.

Soda stuttered, now standing in Darry's room alone. He folded his arms and thought. Then he muttered, "If I'm crazy, then I just might be crazy enough to figure out what's going on here."