Pony runs home, because the time is way past his curfew, and Darry is waiting up. They fall asleep, and when Johnny wakes Pony up it's 2 a.m. Pony and Johnny go to a vacant lot to hang out before heading home. Cherry stops the fight from happening, and the girls leave with their boyfriends. The boys offer to walk the girls home after the movie, but along the way, the girls' boyfriends reappear and threaten to fight the greasers. Dally leaves after giving the girls a hard time, but another greaser, Two-Bit Mathews, joins Pony and Johnny. There they meet Sherri (Cherry) Valance and her friend Marcia, who have left their Soc boyfriends at the drive-in because the boys were drinking. The next night Pony and two other gang members, Dallas Winston (Dally) and Johnny Cade, go to a drive-in movie. This incident sets the tone for the rest of the story, because the event tells the reader that a fight between these two groups needs no provocation. The Socs badly injure and threaten to kill Ponyboy however, some of his gang happen upon the scene and run the Socs off. The story opens with Pony walking home alone from a movie he is stopped by a gang of Socs who proceed to beat him up. The greasers' rivals are the Socs, short for Socials, who are the 'West-side rich kids.' The boys are greasers, a class term that refers to the young men on the East Side, the poor side of town. Pony and Soda are allowed to stay under Darry's guardianship as long as they all behave themselves. Ponyboy and his two brothers - Darrel (Darry), who is 20, and Sodapop, who is 16 - have recently lost their parents in an automobile accident.

The novel tells the story of Ponyboy Curtis and his struggles with right and wrong in a society in which he believes that he is an outsider. The Outsiders is about two weeks in the life of a 14-year-old boy.

The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton