A/N: Would have had this up yesterday, but I put my hand through a glass door so I couldn't really type it too well.

Johnny stood up slowly, feeling unsteady on his feet. He reached out his left hand and pressed it against the wall to support himself, the other gingerly touching his head. He could feel a bump on the back of his head where he had hit the wall the previous night.

He looked at his clock and saw it said 8:57, which nearly sent Johnny to tears again, but he was learning to hold back. School started in three minutes, and Johnny had to get dressed, have breakfast, and walk to school. He'd never been late before, and didn't want to get a detention, so he ran to his dresser and pulled out a pair of his favorite blue jeans and a shirt.

Thinking that maybe his parent's had forgotten to wake him up, he called out, "Mom?" a few minutes later as he ran down the stairs, fully dressed and carrying his book bag. "Mom?" he called out again, but there was still no answer, and no sign of either of his parents anywhere. Thinking maybe they'd had to go to work early and they'd forgotten to tell him, he looked on the table where his mother always left his lunch, thinking he'd grab it and run to school; but it wasn't there. Johnny frowned and ran out the door.

"You're late," Mrs. Brown said as Johnny stepped into the classroom, his book bag slung over his shoulder.

"Sorry Mrs. Brown…" Johnny said quietly as he took his seat, putting his bag behind his chair, taking out his books and putting them on his desk.

"Do you have a good reason?" she asked, her brown eyes burning into him, making him feel out of place.

Would not being woken up by your parents count as a good reason? Johnny wondered.

"My dad's car broke down on the way here," Johnny said with a blush rising in his cheeks. He'd never been very good at lying to anyone, much less his teachers or anyone older than him.

Mrs. Brown turned around and started to write on the blackboard. "Since it's your first time, Jonathon, I won't give you detention, but if it happens again…" She let her voice trail off, and Johnny felt part of the anxiety that had settled in the pit of his stomach drift away. "Since you were late, Jonathon, will you read page 32 in the reader, out loud to the class?"

Johnny nodded, feeling every set of eyes in the class trained on him as he opened his book.

"The child was… wa… walking?" Johnny started, pronouncing every letter in the word walking, much to the giggles to some of the other kids in the class. "Down the street when to his… s… urp.. rize…" he continued, sounded out the word slowly as he read. "A l…a… A lamb… ca-"

"It's lamb, Johnny, you don't pronounce the 'B'," Mrs. Brown told him with a hint of annoyance in her voice.
"Sorry…" Johnny mumbled, his blush more pronounced than ever. "A lamb came th.. th.. through?" At his pronunciation of the word 'Though' the entire class went into the laughter, and even Mrs. Brown couldn't keep a straight face. "Sorry…" he said again.

"That's enough, Johnny," Mrs. Brown said. "Janet, can you finish?"

Johnny wasn't sure if she'd picked Janet because she wanted to hear Janet read or whether it was to make Johnny look bad, but either way she'd made him look even worse than he had while reading; Janet delivered the rest of the page without hesitation and without a single mistake pronouncing a word.

"Can you all hand in this weekends homework?" Mrs. Brown asked after they had all put away their readers, and started to walk up and down the isles collecting a notebook from each student.

Johnny reached into his desk, feeling happy because at least he'd done something right. He'd done his homework, and even though some student's would be better than his, he was confident that he had done a decent job. At least, he was confident until he couldn't find his notebook in his desk, or in his book bag, or on the floor, or on his desk… Then, he remembered.

"Johnny?" Mrs. Brown said, this time with a look of obvious annoyance.

"I forgot it," he said quietly, looking at his shoes.

"You what?"

"I forgot it at home," he said a little louder, still not looking at her.

"I think that means you didn't do it," she said, slapping his desk with the palm of her hand. "Today isn't your day, Jonathon Cade… Detention, today, at lunch. Room 21. Bring your lunch."

Johnny frowned and tried to dig the toe of his shoe into the floor, thinking of what his first detention would bring.

When Johnny walked into detention, it wasn't like what he'd thought it would be. Students were sitting around talking, eating their lunches, just like what happened during normal lunches. He took a seat and looked around; there wasn't anyone he knew there, and then he realized there wasn't even a teacher there. Anything could happen and no one would even be there to stop it… At the thought, two people sat down beside him, one on each side.

"Hey Johnny," said the one on his left. Johnny looked over and realized it was Sodapop.

"Hey…" he replied.

"What are you doing here?" the boy on his right asked, and Johnny realized it was Steve.

"Detention… I forgot my homework," he said quietly.

"Really, that's it? I'm here for sticking pencil's in the ceiling… I didn't think I'd get caught; the teacher wasn't in the room when I started… I didn't know she'd walk in on me doing it… She was madder about me standing on the desk than anything," Soda chattered.

"Then why's Steve here?" Johnny asked, looking at Steve.

"They were his pencils," Soda said, and when Johnny looked back at him he had a huge grin on his face. "Where's the teacher here, anyways?"

Johnny shrugged and it made Soda grin even wider as he opened up a brown bag that Johnny knew contained his lunch and Steve did the same.

"Where's your lunch?" Steve asked Johnny, realizing Johnny didn't have anything with him but a book.

"I forgot it…" Johnny mumbled, and Soda stopped grinding a pencil into the hole in the desk to look at him.

"What are you doing to eat then?" he asked, looking at the book as if it was in danger of being eaten.

"Nothing, I'll eat when I get home I guess…" Johnny said.

"Not hungry?" Steve asked him.

"No," Johnny answered, but his stomach betrayed him by gurgling loudly just as he answered.

"Well…" Soda said, lowering his apple from where he had it aimed at a classmates head. "Want an apple?" Without waiting for an answer, he dropped it on the desk Johnny was sitting at.

"You can have half my sandwich if you want…" Steve said slowly, as though not sure if he wanted to make the sacrifice then decided it would be worth it. "It's bologna though," he said with a little frown on his face.

"That's okay," Johnny said smiling for the first time since the previous day. "I always get bologna." Maybe detention won't be so bad, Johnny thought to himself.

A/N: Since I ended the last chapter sadly, I thought I'd end this one on a friendship note And Two-Bit and Dally are coming, promise.