Author's Note: Hehee...It's been a while since I updated this one. Sorry folks.

Disclaimer: The elements taken from The Outsiders do not belong to me.

"Boy, is it a goal of yours to piss me off every day?" Johnny, although he slept the night for the first time in a very long while—his exhaustion returned with the sound of his father's gravely voice. "For fucks sake, answer me."

"No, sir."

Harvey Cade grabbed his son by the back of his hair and dropped him down on the cold, wood floor beside the bed. "Get the hell up!" Harvey gave him a swift kick in the stomach before pulling Johnny up and throwing him against the wall, making the boy's head pound.

"Har-vey!" Barbara shrieked. "Your kid has school. I don't want another damn truant officer coming around here telling me I'm a bad mother." Although, Barbara was in another room, Johnny could just picture her stamping her feet like a child with a frustrated pout on her face. Johnny himself, however, was still crumpled on the floor by the wall, bracing himself for however pissed off his father was going to be after arguing with his mother.

"Shut your goddamn mouth. I know. Why do you think I'm bothering to be his human alarm clock?" Under his breath, Harvey mumbled, "Damn kid ain't worth the trouble."

XXX

The clock above the office read about 11:40. This wasn't an unusual time for Johnny to arrive. The attendance woman had even come to recognize his face out of the approximately seven-hundred students at Will Roger's high school.

"Mr. Cade, it's not good that you keep coming in to late. You've been missing a lot of very important classes. Two weeks ago, you didn't even show up for that whole week!" She sighed, and then lowered her glasses down on her small nose. "John, please tell me why you've been so late."

Johnny's ears heated up a little bit and he turned his head away. Even through the little sliding glass door of her office, the genuinely concerned stare from her made him agonizingly uncomfortable.

"Johnny? That's what the fellows you pal around with call you, right?"

He nodded.

"Johnny…" she started, but it seemed as if she couldn't finish what she had planned to say. She sighed heavily and started again, "Mr. Cade, here is your pass. Move along to class now."

Johnny felt horrible for putting that look of sadness and disappointment on her caring face that was just starting to get wrinkles, but she was right, he had to get to goddamn class.

XXX

Her second day in school, Johnny found out that every other day, Rebecca was in his study hall. The supervising teacher was kind of rigid so there was no talking allowed—Johnny praised the highest heavens for this because even though he wouldn't mind if she became one of his friends, he wouldn't know what to say.

Johnny sat behind her and a row over so he could watch her. He knew that was weird, but someone as quiet as him would rather find things out by watching rather than asking questions. In the forty or so minutes of looking at her through his peripheral vision, he learned that she was right handed she doodled daisies in the margins of her notes, and was reading Tess of the D'Urbervilles. He also learned that even though he took a few years of French, he had no clue how to pronounce that. Johnny was proud for even knowing that it was French. He was in a trance trying to figure that out when the bell rang and his pencil rolled off his desk. Just like a goddamn movie, before he had a chance to reach for it, Rebecca already had it.

"Here," she said, putting it back on the desk and then hurrying to her next class.

If Johnny were Soda, Steve, Two-Bit, or Dally, he would have done anything to keep her focus on him. Soda would have offered to walk her to her next class or gave her a gesture of thanks accompanied by his knight-in-shining-armor smile, but Johnny new none of that would work. He wasn't Soda or Steve or anyone. He was Johnny H. Cade who seemed to be completely invisible to girls. He had no chance with a girl like Rebecca or any girl.

Johnny shoved the stubby pencil into his pocket and went to find Pony for a much needed smoke break.

XXX

The first inhale of tobacco was such a relief and so was talking to Pony. Sure it was Pony's lunch and not his and he should have been in class, but he'd already missed most of the day anyway so what was one more class?

"Gary Bledsoe was telling me that we're going to get a huge pile of homework in biology tonight. I hate that. Darry is going to be on my case about it because he got all A's in biology and I brought home a B last week. It's real hard balancing homework and track, Johnny. If you did track, you'd understand. It's so much work."

Johnny just nodded. He really didn't understand how hard it would be. He missed his lesson on rocks this morning for his science and didn't know how Pony could list all of the bones a person had off the top of his head.

"Johnny, you should really read this play we're talking about in English, The Crucible. Everyone keeps talking about the witches that are in it and stuff, but I keep thinking about the main girl and how she was sneaking around with this older, married guy. I don't know how they didn't get caught. Here, let me read this part to you."

The sound of Pony's voice reading those old words was really nice, he could lean back and smoke and listen to the story. The words didn't make too much sense, but Pony had an alright voice. He did get how this girl really wanted to be with that guy though, but he wasn't having it because he ended up loving his wife after all. He wondered what it felt like to love someone that much. To share intimate experiences more than once and have it mean something unlike the sometimes gross stories Two-Bit and Dally told. That's one think he really liked about Pony, he could talk to Johnny like another person and didn't have to talk like "one of the guys" like the rest of the gang. Rebecca was like that too, she was real and didn't have to pretend to be something. Or so he thought.