Chapter 34: Orphan Blues
Johnny Vincent didn't feel like emerging from the basement of Bullworth Academy. Ever. He wondered if Dennis Luntz would mind it becoming a king's tomb. And what a suitable resting place it would be to a king like he, he thought.
His life had always been a puzzle with pieces missing. He had born to a couple who had also been partners in crime. After they got themselves some ten years in jail, he had been juggled around in "the system". It hadn't given him a very sturdy foundation and being relocated into a foster family to whom he was far more they had bargained for had done nothing to fix that. It had left him with a family that was a family only in name, until he had made greasers his new one that is.
Lola had made most of the difference. She had been a trophy wife at first, but she had become something so much more. When Johnny had really gotten to know her, she had eventually showed him a strange, dark side. She had seemed to be wrapped in the same troubles as he, but unlike him, she had carried them with incredible grace considering the circumstances. She had made it seem like nothing at all while Johnny had been an insecure clown who always had been in the middle of a performance, doing everything to impress or intimidate people around him. He had been far worse than what he had atrophied into when he had found out about Lola and Gord.
The joke had been on him, the melancholic boy guessed. Lola hadn't compensated for her insecurities with her actions, it had been just him who had possessed them in the first place. And he had been so careful about them too, pussyfooting around them and being understanding towards her poor excuses and dodgy behavior. If he hadn't been so wrapped up in his insecurities, he would probably have seen the truth, that she had been guilt-tripping him with problems he had simply projected on her. Too late now.
Somehow, Johnny had wandered to the beginning of the tunnel leading to the Hole. On a whim, he decided to go to the mysterious underground hall, not caring about the rats that scampered on the filthy floor. The Hole itself was now inaccessible, or, well, you could have gone down there but you would have been drenched in filthy, cold water from the rain and melting snow that seeped through the clogged drain all too slowly. So, Johnny simply stared into the pool through the chain link cage, reminiscing.
Larry had looked pretty damn miserable back then, hadn't he? He had been really pale when he had descended to the empty pool. Even paler when he had been carried out of there by Jimmy's cronies. Johnny hadn't even helped, just watched from the sidelines. Johnny wasn't sure what to think about him being gay, if he even was that, but in the light of what Lola had said about him, it felt all the more sicker that he had beaten him up and then just gawked when he had collapsed.
In fact, disgust suddenly twisted his stomach to a knot. Pieces started to snap into place and he saw the bigger picture a little better. That gnawing feeling of insincerity he had gotten from Larry when he had told him that there had been "nothing to talk about" whenever Johnny had asked him about girls. That incredible awkwardness he had tried to hide when Johnny had told him about his and Lola's sex life that Johnny had assumed to be because Larry was Lola's ex. That total self-imposed seclusion from the greasers that had seemed like a gross overreaction.
Oh man. It had been there, right under his nose, and he hadn't figured it out. But why hadn't Larry ever made an effort to tell him or at least make some distance? Had his plan actually been to try to secretly, err, seduce Johnny instead of Lola? No, Johnny couldn't see it like that. Then again, he seemed to have an impressive track record with not seeing the truth when it was being dangled right in front of him.
Whatever the case, Johnny knew this would bug the hell out of him if he didn't figure this out. It stung, but what Lola had said had been true: far too often he had tried to find out the truth but had deluded himself even more in the process. He would try to do things differently, this time. Also, just like Larry had told him to, he'd have a talk with Norton, to make up with him and to find out what he knew.
Before doing any of that, there was something else he needed to do, though. The young man walked around the chain link cage to its opening, then reached for his left ear, detaching the earring that hung there. As he held it before his eyes, he remembered the day when Lola had persuaded him to let her pierce his ear. She had given that earring to her and he had held it ever since.
With a determined look on his face, he tossed the earring into the water. It would hopefully go down the drain, to the same place his and Lola's relationship had disappeared to.
Author's Notes: Well, this turned out a bit short. This was originally part of the last chapter, but I had to crop it because it was already so long. Anyway, I think I promised to compensate for Johnny's apparent harshness and stupidity earlier in the fic so I hope I've managed to establish that Johnny was never a total dumbass, at the very least. And that while his and Lola's relationship was ill-conceived, it wasn't about Johnny being unreasonably blind and stupid and Lola being a mean slut for its own sake.