"Do you want to go home with me?" I said to him, looking at his subdued, still expression. This was so different from the almost manic violence he usually displays. I kicked at the ground, smoked my cigarette. I didn't want him to have to go home if it was really bad there.

"Naw, it's alright. They'll be passed out when I get home anyway," he said, his voice quiet, and I couldn't help thinking about my essay, and how he was acting just like the character I was basing on him. This would be the Johnny Cade in my essay, quiet, resigned, used to violence but not liking it.

"Okay, man," I said, and took off. I was exhausted.

In school the next day I noticed this girl in my homeroom named Sandy. She had cornflower blue eyes, blond hair. She was kind of pretty, not drop dead gorgeous but pretty in an understated way. She was probably a middle class girl, most of the kids here were. It was rare to be either a greaser or a soc, to be so extreme in wealth or poverty.

I walked the halls between my classes, noticed Soda talking to that kid Steve I had seen at the diner last night. I didn't see Johnny anywhere and wondered if things had really been alright at his house after all. Maybe his parents were still up and fighting and he walked into a mess. I worried about it vaguely.

I looked forward to science class and Keith's antics. It felt like the only time each day where I knew I would laugh. I needed to laugh. My essay and failing English was wearing me down. My boredom was wearing me down. My uncertainty and worry about Johnny was wearing me down. I needed to forget it all for at least one class period.

In the beginning of science class, before the teacher got there, Keith was doing an impression of the teacher. He had the voice down amazingly, and even his quirky mannerisms, the way he would kind of stroke at his mustache after he asked a question. Everyone was laughing, some people were doubled over and holding onto their stomachs, not breathing they were laughing so hard. Then the teacher showed up and everyone tried to get serious, wiping their streaming eyes. I slid into my lab seat next to Keith, shaking my head and laughing a little.

"Hey, do you want to hang out sometime?" I asked him, feeling like an idiot for even suggesting it. Socs did not hang out with greasers, it just wasn't done. But maybe I was getting sick of the way things were done. He cocked one eyebrow at me.

"Don't you live over on the east side?" he said, and I nodded, shame filling up my cheeks with a red blush. I hung my head. I did. I lived on the east side, the crime side, the poor side, the poverty stricken side, the never get ahead side. When I hung out with anybody at all, it was Johnny Cade, a violent going nowhere screw up greaser.

"Yeah," I said, trying to sound like I didn't care, like I was thinking, "what of it?"

He just laughed, shrugged.

"Maybe sometime, kid," he said.

School was done, another day done. I gathered up all my books at my locker and sensed someone standing right near me. I shut my locker door to reveal Johnny, his jean jacket slung over his shoulder. He looked okay, and the devilish glint was back in his eyes. Things must have been alright at his house last night after all.

"Hey, man, where were you?" I said, shoving books into my bag. He slipped into his jacket and flipped up the collar. He was such a hood.

"What do you mean? Nowhere. I was here," I shrugged, just glad that he was okay. I'd had visions of him lying on the floor at his house, his head split open.

We walked home together, and on the way I saw one of those fancy cars kind of tailing us. It was a blue mustang, a real tuff car, and it was filled with a pack of socs in their madras shirts and wine colored sweaters and Italian leather shoes. I glanced at the converse sneakers that both me and Johnny wore. Mine were white high tops and so badly worn that they appeared to be a dingy gray, and there was a hole in one toe. Johnny's were black and scuffed and faded to an almost tar blue color.

The car stopped and five socs hopped out, and I felt this adrenaline kind of shoot through me. I looked at Johnny, who was kind of glaring at them but kind of smiling this evil smile. With someone else, or by myself, I could maybe run, or bluff them out with claims of having a weapon of some sort. But not with Johnny.

I shrunk into myself and drew closer to Johnny as they surrounded us, and taunted us, calling us low life greasers and scum and white trash. Johnny shouted back his own insults, calling them pampered rich boys and telling them all that they had was just daddy's money. He spit at them, and I watched the spit dribble slowly down one of their faces. We were done. We were gonna get pummeled, destroyed.

I didn't like fights, not at all. I didn't like punching and kicking people, and I didn't like getting punched or kicked. Johnny liked it, though. He thrived on it. He, in fact, threw the first punch, taking this tall soc with a crew cut completely off guard. The guy staggered back and Johnny punched him again. One of the others grabbed Johnny's arms and tried to pin them behind his back but Johnny kind of twisted in his grasp and kicked back at him at the same time, connecting solidly with his shin and the guy let him go and howled in pain. I wasn't doing anything.

There were punches and kicks all over the place, and one of them got Johnny in the stomach and he doubled over, and I punched that guy right in the head. I kicked another guy and by this time Johnny had stood up again and grabbed one of the guys around the neck and punched the daylights out of him. One of them knocked me down and kicked me right in the ribs so hard I thought he broke them.

We weren't going to win. There were five of them, and by the looks I thought they were about 17 or 18 or so. I was only 14. Johnny was 16 but he was small, despite being crazy. I watched him punch one and kick another and I saw them finally get his arms pinned behind his back and wail on him. I got knocked down again and curled up away from the kicks. They were really letting Johnny have it, and I saw the blood that was trickling from his busted lip. Blood was falling to the ground in round drops. He liked this? I couldn't understand why.

They left, left us curled up on the ground and moaning, and they got back into their fancy car and drove away.