Inspiration hit today in Study Hall! This is Joanne's little snippet. I know she has no real relation to any of the characters yet...but this suddenly formed, and I think it's interesting. So here you go. We won't see Joanne for a long while after this, the chapters after being mostly concerned with how the core group (Benny, Mark, Collins, and Roger) got together, and how Maureen and Alison tie into it. And, of course, there will be some Angel and Mimi. But Joanne's going to be put in the back burner after this, so I had to write something while introductions were still going on. So here you go! I'm a little iffy about how I portrayed Joanne...but it's okay. Anyhoo! Enjoy!

Disclaimer: C'mon now. You KNOW I don't own them.

Joanne Jefferson walked around the large building, Diet Coke in hand, bored (and a little lost, though she'd be hesitant to admit it around these people), wonder why she had come.

She was on her way to becoming a lawyer. Like her parents, Joanne had high goals, and was determined to meet those goals. Just a few hours ago, she had completed one of the hardest exams of her life. Why was she here, at this party? The answer was pretty simple. Because she thought someone who liked her invited her to this random house. Turns out they weren't at this party anyway, har-har. Joanne felt a little alone because of it...wait, no, scratch that. She felt extremely alone.

Joanne had always been a bit of a loner. She liked to get the job done and get it done right, and the only way to do it right was to do it yourself. She hated group projects in school, ending up doing a majority of the work if not all of it. She liked people all right, but she didn't always trust them. Despite some of her suspicions of people, Joanne was very warm to her friends. Her roommate, Natasha, said once that Joanne was like a Gobstopper; the more you hung around, the more layers were exposed until you got to the center of her. Joanne laughed hard as Natasha told her this in her thick Russian accent, but always thought of it in the back of her mind, how surprisingly true that was.

The party Joanne was currently attending was not Joanne's idea of fun. Drunk people staggered practically everywhere, and behind each closed door lay a multitude of couples sucking face, clothing strewn in patches amongst the floor. Joanne didn't mind getting drunk every so often, but she despised parties like this. Ugh.

She was about to leave when a strong arm grabbed her shoulder. "Where are you goin'?" a voice slurred, and Joanne snapped her head around to look behind her.

"I'm go—oh! Ralph!" she exclaimed, calming down a little. "I was beginning to wonder if you were going to show." Joanne blushed a little. It was not often she found herself falling for a guy, but it happened.

Ralph was Joanne's first friend in law school. They had both been lost, and he smiled and asked her to coffee. She said yes; after all, she could always tell him if he asked, "Sorry, but I'm more attracted to girls, hope you understand." He seemed like a nice guy, though, and Joanne felt no need to express her sexuality immediately. In fact, she never liked to. Joanne wasn't the kind of person to go up to someone and tell them, "Hello, my name's Joanne, yes, I am black, and yes, I'm also bisexual with lesbian tendencies, how do you do?" If the person stayed around long enough, they would find out all they needed to know.

And Ralph, well, he stayed around. He was sweet and funny, always some sort of comment popping out of his mouth. Joanne enjoyed his company, and he soon grew on her. It hit her that she had never told him about which way she really swung, and then it also occurred to Joanne that she might not want to mention it to him.

But as she took a closer look, Joanne frowned. "You're been drinking. You're smashed," she said with disgust.

"Well, yeah, that's what I came here to do," he muttered, throwing his arms up, the nice side of him lost to the alcohol. "I've been looking for you all night!"

"Well, I'm going," she said, angry and disappointed. He didn't bring her here to enjoy her company, that was for sure. Perhaps he even planned to get her behind a closed door. Who knows? But Joanne wasn't going to stick around to find out.

"No!" Ralph yelled, grabbing Joanne's arm, ripping the shoulder of her shirt.

"Let go of me, Ralph," Joanne growled. It took a lot to get her angry, but when she did get to that point, she exploded.

"Shhh," he said, putting a wobbling finger to his lips. "Just come with me, baby," he slurred, "and let me show you around." For a second, she paused, then snatched her arm away from Ralph's grasp, his fingers slipping on the silk blouse she wore. He regained a grip on the cloth, but not her arm, ripping the sleeve from her shirt. As Joanne swiftly ran from the drunken Ralph, she could hear him yell her bame, cursing at her, screaming into the night.

Joanne stopped at a playground that wasn't too far from the party house...but far enough that Ralph wouldn't chase her. She sat down on a swing, and started to cry. Joanne, even when she was a little girl, never sobbed out loud. Later, though, she would find herself sobbing constantly at the death of an angel, but for now, all she did was sniffle and let the salty tears drip down her cheeks. Goddammit, Joanne, goddammit. How stupid could you be, doing that? Ralph was a stupid bitch, you knew it all along. How could you crush on him like that?

"You okay?" a soft voice said behind her. Joanne whipped her head up to see a girl, just around her age, swinging upside down from the monkey bars.

"Yeah, I'm okay," Joanne replied, a little surprised at seeing someone her age playing on a playground as if they were in first grade again.

"You're crying," the stranger said, her shoulder-length hair bouncing wildly as she jumped from the bars. The future lawyer could see the true shade of the girl's hair as she walked to the swing beside her, the moonlight bouncing off it—strawberry blond.

"Yeah. Guys are assholes," Joanne remarked, laughing as the words came out of her mouth. "Never though I'd be saying that."

The girl smiled. "Your door swings the other way, huh?"

Joanne debated on not telling her, but instead just getting up and walking away... "Well, I can swing both ways, but yeah, I like girls better." The female's gray eyes twinkled.

"Whatever floats your boat, you know? Me, well, I'm bisexual too. Best of both worlds, you know?" she added, winking, and Joanne chuckled.

"Yeah." Pause. "Why are you here so late?" she asked her new companion.

"Had an urge to relive my childhood," the female answered, giving Joanne a beautiful smile. "After all, once I get up there in years, I won't be able to do this anymore! Gotta live life while you can, baby!" she shouted, swinging slightly and laughing. "Can't let life pass you by!"

Even though it was a very naive sense of the world, Joanne couldn't help but notice the ring of truth around the words. "Too bad we get old so fast," she found herself saying, and the girl wagged her finger, tsking Joanne.

"You only get old fast if you let yourself get old fast." The redhead looked to the moon, and for a slight moment Joanne saw a sadness in her eyes. "Of course, the good die young, right?" This was a moment both would look back on later; Joanne would repeat this line over and over again in her head when her one of her closest friends would die. The girl next to her would think of this in her last moments, writing it on a little note for her best friend and saying it out loud in the bathroom before she died. The good die young...right?

"What happened to your arm?" the girl asked, pointing to Joanne's missing sleeve.

"Ah, some drunken ass tried to drag me somewhere I didn't want to go," she said, and laughed. "It was really scary when it happened, but now...now, it's kinda funny."

They both laughed. "Well, hey, it's better to laugh at life sometimes. Keeps it from bringin' ya down." She swung a little, and then got up from the seat. "I better get going. I kinda left the boy I was with...he might start to worry." She winked. "He's my black-haired, blue-eyed baby. He doesn't like me to wonder far. He knows I'm a wild child in secret." She shook her head, the mane of hair swaying and sweeping in the night sky, moonlight illuminating off every strand. Joanne would remember it as one of the most beautiful things she would ever see.

"Thanks," Joanne said, getting up. "You know," she added, a bit of hesitation in her voice, "you've helped me a lot. I mean...I could have gotten pretty shook up over that whole thing. But talking with you—"

"Sometimes we just need someone there to talk to," the redhead said, grinning.

"My name's Joanne," she blurted, the idea of walking off without knowing the girl's name suddenly disturbing.

The female caught Joanne completely by surprise by reaching over and kissing the mocha-skinned girl on the cheek, a soft, friendly kiss that was a kind of goodbye, in a sense. "I'm April." She patted Joanne's cheeks, and started to walk away.

"I—" Joanne started to say, and then paused as April turned around. She grinned. "I'll be seeing you."

April grinned. "Same crazy time, same crazy place," she replied, winking, and walking off into the darkness. Joanne would never see April again until that one day when Mark would show her a picture on Roger's nightstand, and she would remember the sweet girl on the swings, not fully believing Mark when he told her what happened to her. She couldn't believe it.

For now, though, Joanne walked back to her dorm. Natasha asked her in a worried voice what has happened to her, why was her sleeve like that, what went down at the party, and Joanne just hugged her. "You know, I really have no idea." And she went to bed.

Same crazy time, same crazy place. It was a meeting of chance, a simple twist of fate, two paths just happening to intersect.

confusion et belle.

It's time to start this dance.

And now we start getting into the good stuff. Hopefully, it'll go faster from here!