I'm back! I'm really sorry for the unannounced hiatus. There was a lot of stuff going on in my life, and to be honest, there's still a lot now. I'm under a lot of stress of trying to find a job that would take me in the next few weeks. It's the only thing that is keeping me from graduating. If I don't get one, I won't graduate until May 2022. So, yeah, a lot of pressure. But I'm going to try my best to make weekly updates again. I also need to find my writer's voice again because it had been lost in that long break.

Anyway, I know that a lot of you have to reread this story to catch up again. It's been that long. I do have to admit that I don't remember a lot of what I wrote. If anyone can, can you list the major events that happened in this story? I don't like to reread my work after posting it. Thank you so much.

Oh! Merry Christmas, by the way.

o-o-o

Ponyboy felt sick to his stomach. It violently lurched around, ready to spew out the breakfast that he had eaten that morning. Despite the morning's cold weather, he was sweating something fierce. Ponyboy wiped his palms on his jeans, but it hardly helped at all. Feeling desperate and gross, he shoved his hands into his pockets instead. His borrowed backpack felt heavy even though there was hardly anything inside of it. The straps felt like they were digging into his shoulders, tethering him to his spot. He hated this feeling and he had hoped that he would be able to avoid feeling it—the anxiety he meant. He thought that he would be able to avoid going to school altogether and return to his time period before it could start for him. However, it seemed like his situation was way too complicated to solve within just a few days.

He stared at his school, examining its features once again. The faded paint, bricks, and shrubbery were all so similar yet different than what he remembered them to be when he attended the school back in the '60s. It felt like he was just there attending classes a few days ago, but, in reality, it had been decades which was disorienting to think about. He shouldn't have been so nervous, and yet, he was. Not for the lessons—he was fine with those—but for the fact that he was an enigma there.

A hand gently placed itself on his shoulder, causing him to jolt before relaxing. It was just Samuel, who had been standing by his side for quite a while now. The other male smiled encouragingly at him.

"It's going to be okay," he assured him. "You got this."

"Says the guy who's from this time period," Ponyboy mumbled for only them to hear. He gave Samuel a deadpanned expression, huffing.

"I'm pretty sure that school now is going to be the same as it was in your time besides the different technology. There had been no improvements to the dumb school system."

Ponyboy pressed his lips together tightly. "Do the teachers still hit their students?"

"Do they do what?" Samuel looked horrified. He rapidly shook his head. "They aren't allowed to do that, but that's not the point. It's going to be really similar to how it was in your time period."

"That's not what I'm worried about."

"Then what are you worried about?"

The first bell rung, starting a ripple effect of students walking inside the school building. Samuel and Ponyboy stayed still though, watching people pass by them. They didn't have much time themselves. They still had to check him in and get to their first class.

"The people," Ponyboy answered right as someone accidentally bumped into him. He stumbled a bit before correcting himself. He removed his hands from his pockets, opting to rub at the back of his stiff neck instead. There were eyes on him, but that might have been his imagination. But, then again, it might not have been as well. He wouldn't know unless he stared back, which wasn't something that he wanted to do. "I think I'll stick out like a sore thumb. It feels like people are staring at me."

Samuel smiled, leaning down so that his lips were near one of Ponyboy's ears. His warm breath brushed against it, sending a shiver down his spine. "They're only staring at you because of how good you look."

With that short sentence, Ponyboy felt his body heat up, ears turning red. His heart fluttered against his chest that became tight. He bit his bottom lip, smiling bashfully. Samuel's ears were just as red as his were when he pulled back, eyes looking anywhere but at Ponyboy. He cleared his throat.

"Anyway… if you use everything that I taught you and stick to the sidelines, nobody will bother you."

"If you say so..."

"I know so." He gestured to the school's doors. "Now, come on. We shouldn't be late. It's your first day, after all."

Great… Ponyboy took a deep breath, trying to make his face the correct shade again. It wasn't that hard with his worry of school back on his mind. It was time to go for it. He nodded, swallowing his spit back down his throat.

"Let's do it," he said, starting his walk to the door.

o-o-o

Checking in didn't take long at all as it turned out. The people in the office used one of those computer things and had it all finished in a matter of minutes. He was given his schedule which was freshly printed and warm to the touch. Even though the process was fast, he was still late for his first class. They had asked if he needed someone to show him around since Samuel left to get to his first class on time, but he declined. He already knew where all of his classes were.

His first class was English. Due to his age and lack of records, he had to repeat his freshman year. It wasn't that big of a deal to him. It made his life easier and he wasn't planning on staying anyway. They would be refresher courses if anything since he had already taken most of them. That's what he hoped for anyway.

Opening the classroom door, he felt cold sweat run down his back when the entire class turned to him, watching him like he was some alien. For a second, he stared back at the silent class before pushing himself inside. He walked towards the teacher who was sitting at her desk near the back of the room. By the time he reached her, the class had already turned back to their work.

"And you must be Ponyboy Curtis, correct? Did I pronounce that correctly?" the teacher, Mrs. Sable, asked with a kind smile after she turned to him. She was on the young side, not too much older than the rest of the students.

"That's right," Ponyboy nervously answered.

"It's nice for you to join us. We were finishing up a quiz, so you didn't miss anything today. After class, please come and talk to me so I can get you caught up. Your seat is over there, by the way," she said, pointing to a seat all the way in the front of the room. Great...

Ponyboy gave her a tight smile before sitting down in his new desk, which uncomfortably wrapped around one side of his body. It was a new design for a desk. He should have figured that the desks would be different, but this seemed like a downgrade from the desks that he was used to. It was more constricting and smaller. It seemed like such an inconvenience. He shifted in his seat, trying to find a comfortable position on the hard-plastic material. If the day doesn't kill him, the backpains that he would receive from the desks would.

The teacher walked to the front of the classroom after collecting all the quiz sheets. Fortunately for Ponyboy, she didn't introduce him besides explaining to the class that he was a new student to prevent confusion. She turned on this giant screen (he found out that it was called a SMART Board later) before she started, "We're going to start with answering what the hidden meaning of the bolder that hit Piggy's head in Lord of the Flies..."

o-o-o

Samuel was right. Besides the different technology, classes weren't very different. However, he could tell that the technology wasn't the best. It was still amazing and Ponyboy had a hard time focusing on the lesson because he was too focused on the device itself. In every one of his classes, the teachers started poking the SMART Board at different spots to try to "calibrate" it. One of them gave up entirely and started to write on a whiteboard that was located at the side of the classroom. True to its namesake, it was literally a white board. The teacher wrote on it with markers that were able to be erased which blew his mind. He was used to chalkboards. Chalk could erase but they were hard to see on the board. The markers were vivid and easy to erase. Sure, Ponyboy had heard about whiteboards. They were invented during his time. But he had never seen one in person. His school, like any others in the nation, hadn't switched over to using them yet. When he does return to his time period, he hoped that they would switch to them at school.

But, despite his excitement, he was disappointed that Samuel wasn't in any of his classes. He should have expected that though. There were a number of classes at the school and Samuel was in a higher year than him. The only time that he would get to see him was before and after school and during the short lunch break. That was where Ponyboy was at.

He looked around the crowded hallways of the school for his friend. He probably wasted a quarter of the period when he finally found him at the entrance of the library. Samuel's face brightened when he saw Ponyboy.

"There you are," Samuel chirped, waving his phone. "I've been texting you, but you weren't answering me."

"You were texting me?" Ponyboy asked, surprised. He had forgotten all about his phone. He still wasn't used to it and all of its capabilities. He also muted it that morning. Ponyboy pulled it out, turning on the screen to see a number of texts and calls from Samuel. "Oh. Sorry about that."

"You're here now so it's whatever." Samuel's stomach growled, causing him to instinctively hug his stomach. "Let's go eat lunch now. I'm starving."

The two of them entered the library. Apparently, he ate there instead of the cafeteria or outside. That was another thing different about their time periods. Ponyboy was used to leaving the school during lunch with the gang members that still attended. Two-Bit or Steve would drive him to the DX Station. Now, no one was allowed to leave the premises at all.

"So, how is it so far?" Samuel asked on their way to a table that already had people sitting at it. His friends, Ponyboy presumed.

"Good, I guess," Ponyboy said, shrugging. The weight of his backpack returned. When he came to school, it was practically empty. More than halfway through the day, however, it was filled with papers and textbooks. Most of which were for homework. There was so much—way more than what he was used to even with the advanced classes that he had taken back in his time.* Ponyboy could already predict that he wasn't going to get much sleep in the next few days. "You didn't tell me that there was going to be so much homework assigned."

"What do you have to do?" When Ponyboy listed his homework so far, Samuel briefly nodded his head. "That's average. They're letting you off easy for your first day. I'm surprised they're not making you do a bunch of make-up work."

Ponyboy shot him a panicked look. "Average?"

"Yeah… Sucks, right?"

"How do you find time to do this and still have enough time to do other things?" Ponyboy asked incredulously.

"I don't know. I usually have a panic attack every day because it's so much."

"Is this why you have a nihilistic humor?"

"That's just a small part of a bigger picture." Samuel patted his back, sitting down at the table to start introducing him to his friends.

Samuel's friends were eccentric in personality. It was a smallish group but was very diverse. Ponyboy wasn't used to it. Water fountains, for example, weren't shared by black and white people. They were separated. People would not dare to freely talk about their sexualities like they were, and the males certainly wouldn't act flamboyantly.

Most of the people in the group in front of him were LGBTQ+ and there was only one straight girl in the mix. Ponyboy thought that he would be the other one, but he wasn't certain if he was straight anymore. In the group, bisexuals were the majority. It was diverse in race and religions as well, and the unfamiliarity was awkward for him at first. It was a learning situation for him, which seemed to be every second of his life here.

The group asked him a few questions about himself to include him in the conversation more, but that was what they only did before going back to their previous conversation. They were talking about a bonfire and some upcoming raves, or whatever that was. When he asked what a rave was, he was met with weird looks from the table.

"Ponyboy's just really behind," Samuel quickly explained. "His parents never allowed him to use a phone until recently. He wasn't even allowed to use a computer."

"Seriously?" one of them asked, jaw dropping.

"I'm so sorry," another said. Ponyboy could only thinly smile.

They continued talking and Ponyboy found himself zoning out at some point during it. He went to place his hands on his lap to stop himself from bouncing his leg, but along the way, the back of his hand brushed across the bottom of the old library table. He cringed when he touched gum. But he also touched something else. In the brief time that he touched it, he knew that it was a carving. He didn't think much of it at that moment. People carve stuff into the tables all the time. There's probably a dozen just on that old table. He quickly retreated his hands, wanting to go to the bathroom to wash them off but didn't want to make a scene. So, he waited until the bell rang.

When it finally did, Ponyboy bent down to pick up his bag to leave. While doing that, curiosity got the best of him, and his eyes shifted to the carving that he touched. It was old and jagged like it had been carved decades ago with a knife. It probably was, but the message was everything to Ponyboy.

PONYBOY WHERE ARE YOU
-JC

Ponyboy's breath shuttered, hands gripping his backpack's straps so tightly that they turned whiter than a sheet of paper. His mind started to race with thousands of thoughts swarming inside it. There was no way. His eyes were playing tricks on him. But the more he looked at the carving, the more he knew that it was actually there.

JC… Johnny Cade. It had to be him. Johnny had been looking for him.

"Something wrong?" he heard Samuel ask. His friends had already left to finish the remaining classes.

"Johnny…" was all Ponyboy could muster out.

"Johnny? He was one of your friends, right?" At the question, Ponyboy nodded his head, still not tearing his eyes away from the carving. "What about him?"

"He…" Ponyboy swallowed thickly. "He left a message for me."

There was a long pause as Samuel ducked down to look at what he was staring at. Once he read the message, his breath hitched in his throat. "Would you look at that…"

"Excuse me, but please go to class," the librarian called out to them. Ponyboy stood up, finally turning to Samuel with determination in his eyes.

"I have to go back," he suddenly declared, voice firm. "I need to go back to the gang no matter what."

For a second, sadness flashed across Samuel's eyes. It was so fast that Ponyboy almost missed it. A small smile quickly replaced it, but even that looked sloppy.

"Yeah," Samuel agreed, voice breathy, "you have to go back. That's how it should be."

o-o-o

(*) I asked my dad about homework when he went to high school in the '60s. He graduated early and took a lot of harder courses. He said he hardly got homework at all. Most of which would be a few questions or just reading a bit. That's what I'm basing this off of.