"So how was tutoring?" Soda asks, but before Johnny can answer, Soda slaps a cancer stick out of Two-Bit hands. "Cut it out, will ya? We're at a gas station, for Christ sake. I don't want this place going up in flames."

Two-Bit roll his eyes. Johnny sighs in relief, hoping with the distraction they'll forget Soda's question.

"Yeah, how was it, Johnnycakes?" Steve asks. No such luck.

Johnny scowls and crosses his arms. "It sucked."

Except, what sucks is that it didn't. Even hanging out at the DX, distracted by his buddies, he can clearly picture the upward slope on the graph, rising increasingly with each exponent. Math (or at least this little bit of math) is not witchcraft anymore. It's not something he throws into the cauldron that comes out correctly because he followed the ingredients, or at other times explodes for no explicable reason. Johnny understands why it works. He hates Randy, and he hates even more being obligated to Randy like he is now. But even more than that hate, he likes how it feels to be a person who can learn something. He can't tell that to the boys.

"Why don't you drop out and join me and Soda?" Steve asks. "You hang around here enough anyway."

"Don't listen to those fools, Johnny," Two-Bit advices, sage-like. "Stay in school as long as possible. In fact, I'd advise you to fail the year deliberately so you can stay as long as possible. Shoot, I'm nearly nineteen and only a junior. At school you got it made, kid. You don't have to work. You can flirt with the hot teachers. You can harass the old ones. School's a breeze."

"We got a customer," Steve mutters.

It's an old lady, so old she has white hair that she still keeps tidy. She's wearing a cardigan, pearls, a plain brown skirt that reaches her calves, and brown stockings, like she looked at a cartoon of an old lady to figure out how to dress.

"Do you need help m'am?" Soda asks, his famous charming smile spread across his face.

"Is that you, Jimmy?" she asks, addressing Johnny. He looks around, trying to figure out a way to avoid her. No such luck again.

"I knew it was you! You're looking taller, Jimmy." He's definitely not any taller since she's last seen him. The lady gives him a hearty pat on the arm and Johnny goes red. He doesn't correct her and tell her his real name. After all, he doesn't remember her name. But he knows exactly who she is. The piano player.

"We've missed you at church, you know," the old lady says. Johnny tucks his hair behind his ear as she waits for him to answer. When he doesn't, she asks, irritated, "Well, where have you been, mister?"

"Um, I, uh..."

Her voice softens at his floundering. "You're always welcome in the Lord's house, sweetheart. Every Sunday, same time, same place." Two-Bit snickers, and only their tenuously held employment keeps Soda and Steve from doing the same.

"Well, it was nice running into you, Jimmy. I hope to see you in church." The old lady turns around, but of course he can't be let off that easy. She turns back towards him, stepping even closer this time. "Oh, I know just the thing!" She actually claps her hands together in excitement.

"There's an ice-cream social tomorrow night after Bible study for young people like yourself. And I don't know how long it's been, but Rev. Thompson retired. There's a nice young man who's taken his place, and he's really proactive about all sorts of modern stuff! He started up a youth group, and he's very political. The teenyboppers really get real kick out of this one." She winks at him. "Plus, there's a few girls who will be there who are real lookers. There's Mr. Carter's daughter, she's fourteen, about your age, isn't that right? She's just your type, I'm sure. A blonde one." And just when Johnny didn't think he could get any redder, the old lady says, "The Lord's waiting for His sheep to return to the fold," and pats his back.

Who was that? Two-Bit mouths between chuckles.

Once the piano lady is out of earshot, Soda shouts, "Our Johnny here is a lost sheep that needs to return to God's flock!"

"Baaaa!" Two-Bit goads.

"Baaaa!" The three of them bleat in unison.

"Cut it out, guys!" Johnny mutters. But they keep laughing and bleating.

Johnny and Pony used to go to church together. He liked it a lot, too. It made him like there was more to life than Tulsa and Socs and greasers. Like there was a bigger meaning to it all. Johnny enjoyed sinking into the pew in the back and listening as the old preacher went on and on about getting saved and the Kingdom of God and surrendering and submitting to a higher power. All of that really appealed to him, too. He wasn't sure whether or not he believed in them magic choirs of angels and stuff, but he wanted to. And it was sure nice to be there, because the middle-class people who had crew cuts and yellow dresses smiled politely at him and Pony and shook their hands even though they were dressed like trash. He'd never had middle class people be nice to him before. Ponyboy stopped showing up after Steve, Soda, and Two-Bit tagged along and made a huge embarrassment of them. But Johnny kept on going, in secret. He didn't want the gang to think he was getting all religious on them or anything.

But one day, the nice old pastor retired, and the church got a new one. And the new one was real into the Old Testament and liked to preach about how the country had gotten godless like the Israelites in the desert, and how the wrong sort of young people were turning it into a nation of sinners and it was up to the right sort of young people to smite them. And he preached about the moral depravity of the hippies, and the negroes who'd gotten uppity, and the pill making women into prostitutes, and the homosexuals who were taking over, and the homosexuals' revolting perversions that were sins against nature and God. Johnny stopped showing up after that. He hates himself enough without having to be reminded why every Sunday.

Johnny wonders if God's real. Sometimes he wants God to be real, because it means all the horrible things that happen happen for a reason. Sometimes he wants God to be make-believe, because if He ain't, it means Johnny's going to hell for being a queer.

Soda stops laughing first. "What's the matter, Johnny? We're just joking around." Soda pulls him into a hug, holds him down playfully, and messes up his hair. But Soda's voice is serious when he asks, "You okay, Johnnycake?" Steve and Two-Bit's laughter quiets down.

"I'm fine," Johnny answers. But they all know he doesn't mean it.