A/N: Welcome to the longest chapter in the story! I don't own Degrassi, the book Animal Farm by George Orwell or the song "Bloody Kiss" by Latefallen. HPV information is courtesy of the Centers for Disease Control.

Chapter 6

Johnny's unusual nightly routine came about out of necessity. Three weeks ago, Johnny was asleep in his own bed when he was awakened by his mom coughing. It sounded like she was trying to hack up a lung. He threw on a pair of jeans, slipped his bare feet into his shoes and grabbed his jacket. He ran into his mom's room, wrapped her up in her blanket and carried her out to the car. Then he drove her to the emergency room.

They waited for nearly an hour before a doctor could see Johnny's mom. She received a breathing treatment to restore her breathing. The doctor told Johnny if this happened again he should give her some hot liquid to drink like coffee or tea to help open her bronchial passages. If that didn't work, he should then bring her back to the hospital.

But he wasn't taking any chances. So he modified his bedtime ritual in order to act more quickly in an emergency. Besides, it proved to be convenient in the long run. If he got through the night without incident, all he had to do in the morning was brush his teeth, put on deodorant and eat breakfast. Then he just put on his shoes, jacket and hat and was out the door just as the nurse from the health department arrived.

The initial scare happened on the night before Holly Jackass confronted him about Alli. He was running on two hours of sleep and he arrived at school late. He was given detention because it was his third tardy that week. Finding out about Alli's betrayal from the biggest bitch in school was just the icing on the cake.

Fortunately, his mom hadn't had another episode since and things between him and Alli were back to the way they were. Johnny was looking forward to seeing her this evening. She wasn't able to meet up after school because she was preparing for the Einstein Math Competition with the other Baby Geniuses. So they made plans to get together after dinner. They both agreed to tell their parents they had to go to the library. Technically, it wasn't a lie. They went to the library, they just didn't go inside. They sat in Johnny's car in the parking lot.

Alli was stressing out about an upcoming math competition that the Baby Geniuses were being forced to compete in. Johnny gave her a hug to make her feel better and then kissed her to help get her mind off the stress. They had been making out for about forty five minutes when Johnny looked out the corner of his eye at the car radio clock.

"Alli" he said between kisses. "We need to stop. It's almost nine and I wouldn't want you to get in trouble." Begrudgingly, Alli got out of the car and walked the half block home.

"Thanks for staying with Mom," Johnny told Magda when he got home. Magda had just finished cleaning the kitchen. Before leaving, she gave Johnny and his mother a hug.

"How was the library, honey?" Johnny's mom asked. "Did you get your paper done?"

"Yeah Ma, I did," Johnny said. He had actually finished his paper for Ms. Kwan's class in the library at school. He hated lying to his mom and sneaking around behind her back, but he wasn't ready to tell her about Alli. He had no idea how far this relationship was going to go. They had already broken up once.

The next day before lunch, Alli visited Johnny at his locker. She told him that The Hustler was playing at the Palace and she wanted to take him. As tempting as that offer was, Johnny wasn't ready to take the chance of going out with Alli in public. Just talking to her in school was risky enough for Johnny.

"I promised Bruce I'd hang out with him at the ravine," he said. It was true, Bruce had been getting on Johnny's case lately about how they never hung out anymore. Alli invited herself to tag along and Johnny tried to talk her out of it. The ravine was no place for a good girl like her.

She persuaded him to reconsider, however. He found it hard to say no to her when she looked at him with those eyes. Besides, a lot of older guys hung out with younger girls in the ravine. No one would make a big deal. Whatever happened in the ravine, stayed in the ravine.

When Alli arrived at the ravine that afternoon, she turned heads. Alli was a pretty girl who looked older than 14. She was with her friend, Clare, who paled in comparison.

"Have you hit that yet?" Bruce asked Johnny. Johnny shot Bruce a look. What the hell kind of question was that? Alli wasn't just another one of his conquests.

"Don't tell me you haven't thought about it," said Bruce. Sure, Johnny had thought about being intimate with Alli many times but it wasn't about that. He respected and cared about Alli.

Johnny and Bruce built a bonfire to fend off the October chill. Johnny had a good discussion about books with Alli and Clare. Like Johnny, the girls liked Orwell. Clare Edwards used to make Johnny uncomfortable. He had made out with her sister Darcy on the roof of Degrassi when she had her meltdown last year. But out of respect for Alli, he decided to give Clare a chance and found her to be nice.

"Wait, you mean pigs started the Russian Evolution?" Bruce asked Clare. Why did he even join the discussion when he'd never even picked up a book?

Clare had to leave and tried to get Alli to leave with her. Deep down, Johnny hoped Alli would go. It was for her own good. The Baby Geniuses had their math competition tomorrow. But Alli convinced Clare to leave without her.

The song "Bloody Kiss" by Latefallen was playing on the radio someone had brought. He turned up the volume. Johnny didn't like that song at first but when he found out Alli liked it, he changed his mind. Looking for a place to be alone, they found a makeshift tent someone had constructed under a tree.

"It's perfect. Just you, just me," said Alli, quoting a line from the show West Drive. It was one of her favorite shows.

"You think we're in the middle of some epic romance," Johnny teased. Clearly, Johnny had never even seen the show. Alli, referred to Johnny as the misunderstood bad boy. Johnny told Alli she was amazing.

They had been making out pretty hot and heavy when Bruce walked by and threw a handful of condoms at them. Alli picked one up and propositioned Johnny. Against his better judgement, Johnny agreed. He stood up, took Alli by the hand and led her to the abandoned van that had been in the ravine for as long as anyone could remember.

Johnny didn't like hooking up in the van. There was just something about laying where so many others have expelled their bodily fluids. But it would have to do under the present circumstances even though Alli deserved better.

There were two important rules for hooking up in the van. When it's cold outside, don't take off all your clothes, just your pants and underwear and maybe your jacket. Not only was the van's transmission shot, but nothing else seemed to work either, including the heater.

And, for God's sake, put a blanket down! People over the years had brought various sheets, blankets and comforters and left them in the van. They hadn't been washed in who knows how long, but they were better than lying on that disgusting shag carpeting. Besides, who wanted rug burns on their ass?

Throughout the whole ordeal, Johnny's mind was elsewhere. Maybe he should have accepted Alli's offer and gone to the movie with her. He supposed he could have dealt with having people from school see them if he had to.

When it was over and they had put their pants back on, Alli looked pretty shaken up. Johnny wanted to hold her in his arms and comfort her, but when he reached out to touch her, she flinched and moved away. She sat up, put her jacket back on and told Johnny she had to go. She rejected Johnny's offer of a ride home.

"You're not walking home alone!" Johnny insisted. If Alli left the van by herself, she would be taunted by the everyone outside. But if Johnny came out with her, they would leave her alone and give Johnny his props.

Neither of them said a word during the drive home. When Johnny dropped Alli off at the end of her block, she couldn't get out of the car fast enough. She practically ran down the street and into her house.

Johnny felt horrible. He had imagined his first time with Alli to be way different than this. He hoped everything would be perfect. They would be in a bed and would have been able to take their time. Afterwards, they would cuddle and fall asleep in each other's arms.

Who was he kidding? He had never had a sexual experience like that and probably never would. Still, he had to find way to make it up to Alli.

At school the next morning, Johnny snuck up behind Alli as she stood at her locker. He tickled her and she must have jumped two feet into the air. She asked Johnny not to call her by her embarrassing nickname and demanded to know Johnny's middle name. She was looking for some some sort of connection, a way to justify what happened last night.

Johnny told Alli his middle name and asked if she was okay. Without answering, she excused her self to get ready for the math competition. This was the opposite of what Johnny usually experienced the morning after a hookup. The other girls sought him out and he avoided them.

At home, Johnny rummaged around in his sock drawer until he found the locket he gave Claudia four years ago. He was determined to make things right again.

The next morning, he told Alli that he knew she wasn't ready but that he wanted to believe she was. He presented her with the locket but she wouldn't accept it. Johnny would end up giving it to the person he should have given it to in the first place, his mom.

After school Alli told Johnny she wasn't going to have sex again for a long time. Johnny knew he had to respect that. He agreed to take things slowly with her. He told Alli it was also his first time in order to make her feel better about what they had done. Unbeknownst to Johnny, that little white lie would come back and bite him in the ass.

Johnny and Alli decided to go public with their relationship but on one condition, no excessive PDA. Johnny thought it was tacky when other couples engaged in it and he felt he and Alli didn't need to prove to everyone they were together. Besides, the Anti Grapevine had run an exclusive regarding their status. It was all everyone could talk about all morning.

As Johnny was putting his books in his locker before lunch, he sensed someone behind him. He turned around to see Megan Rothman standing there. The last time they spoke was when Johnny needed to vent about the whole 'I hate Holly J' thing. Of course he denied his relationship with Alli to her as well.

"Hey Meg," he said smiling. She didn't smile back.

"So it's true?" she asked. "You're with Sav Bhandari's sister? Isn't she in grade nine?"

"Yeah," he replied.

"All these years I'd been waiting for our friendship to turn into something more, for you to make the first move, Johnny." She sounded like she was about to cry.

"Meg, I had no idea you felt that way. You never said anything."

"Right, how was I supposed to do that after the way you treated Jenny Douglas? I always assumed you didn't want to be tied down."

"You and Jenny are two completely different people, Meg." Months ago, Johnny would have asked Megan to be his girlfriend had he known how she felt. But that was before he met Alli.

"You know what?" she said tearfully. "Have fun with your little girlfriend. You better hope her parents don't call the cops on your ass." She turned and walked away without looking back.

Meg's a tough chick, she'll bounce back in no time, Johnny told himself. Then he focused his thoughts on Alli.

They had made plans to go to Wonderland that Saturday, taking advantage of the amusement park's last weekend open until it closed for the winter. Alli told her parents she was going with Clare and her family. Johnny told his mom he was going with Bruce.

They had a great time. In the arcade, they took photos in the photo booth. They had two strips taken, Johnny kept one and Alli kept the other. After the photos, Johnny won Alli a stuffed dog in Skee Ball. That stuffed dog would be the cause of their second breakup.

Shortly after their trip to Wonderland, Alli started going all Jenny on him again. She tried to sit on his lap in public, talked baby talk and did other embarrassing things. Johnny took her aside and reminded her of their agreement. Her solution to the problem was to give him a cell phone with two months prepaid access. Johnny didn't get how that was a good thing. Johnny didn't have a cell phone, not only because he couldn't it, but because he didn't like the idea of anyone being able to locate him every hour of the day.

Yet Johnny took the phone anyway and about five minutes later, he was glad she did. Alli would later explain the difference between texting and sexting. Johnny had no reason to know the difference until now. Seeing those pics of Alli with her shirt off sent Johnny into full on player mode. When Alli invited Johnny to her house after school, presumably to discuss a book she knew from cover to cover, Johnny hoped they'd have time to do something else before her parents came home.

But once Alli batted her pretty eyelashes Johnny let her talk him into posing for pictures with the Wonderland pooch. Big Mistake.

Of course perverted thoughts began to dominate Johnny's brain, especially when Alli stepped it up and sent home some full frontal photos later that night. The next day, he surprised Alli by waiting at the end of Alli's block and driving her to school. His strategy was to pour on the charm in hopes that they could have sex again. This time in a more ideal place than the van.

"Aw, widdle Johnny 'fraid of the dark?" Bruce's mocking tone greeted Johnny and Alli as they walked into school. Johnny looked at the wall in the front hallway and saw a photo of himself and the pooch. One of many that Alli promised not to show anyone. When Alli refused to take it down, Johnny ripped it off the wall himself.

He threatened to send Alli's full frontals to Bruce but it was only a threat. He accidentally pushed the send button when Alli tried to wrestle it away from him. While Alli frantically ran down the hall to try and locate Bruce, Johnny went out to his car and put the cell phone in the glove compartment. School authorities could search his locker but not his car. Johnny wasn't going to take the fall for this one. Let Alli get in trouble. He never told her take naked pics of herself.

He ran into Alli that afternoon. She got in his face and demanded the cell phone back. He might have given it back if she had asked nicely, but that wasn't the case.

"Give me my phone back, loser!" was what she actually said. Johnny wasn't going to give it back to her if she was going to talk to him like that. He was going to make her work for it. This was going to be fun.

Well, it just so happened that Alli and Bruce got off with a slap on the wrist while Johnny got a weeks' detention. He had Peter Stone to thank for that. He once took a video of Manny Santos taking her top off and e-mailed it to the whole school. Even though Johnny didn't take those photos of Alli and only three people saw them (five if you count Mr. Simpson and Ms. Hatzilakos), Johnny had to stay after school all week and clean the music room. Apparently it was pretty dirty.

To hell with Hatzo's zero tolerance policy!

He overheard Alli and her little friends, Clare and Jenna, talking about how they were going to get to school early and break into his locker to steal the phone back. Jenna was going to bring a bolt cutter to school to cut the lock.

He showed up early the next morning too. He opened his lock so the bolt cutter wouldn't be necessary. Then he hid in the boys' bathroom across the hall, opened the door just a a crack and waited for the show to begin. It was pretty entertaining to watch the three niner girls carry out their reconnaissance mission. The only thing of value they found was the photo strip from Johnny and Alli's day at Wonderland. This made Alli all sentimental. Girls are so predictable! thought Johnny.

Johnny finally surrendered and gave Alli back the phone while she was in Media Immersion. He was tired of playing games.

That night in the shower, he noticed a wart or a pimple on his ball sac. He wasn't sure where it came from, all he knew was that it wasn't there the night before. He remembered when Dr. Sally came to school last year and talked about genital warts, or HPV as she called it.

He still had the pamphlet somewhere in his room. He found it in his desk drawer and read it. The pamphlet said that 50% of all sexually active adults will have HPV at some point in their lives. Apparently you can have it for years before the warts appeared. If someone has had multiple partners like Johnny, there was no telling which one they got it from. When people transmit HPV, they often don't know that they even have it. This meant Johnny may have passed it to Alli unknowingly. Condoms didn't always protect against HPV. Johnny was going to have to come clean.

She met him in the Music room after school and he told her everything because she deserved to know. With any other girl, he might have been so considerate. But Alli , despite everything that had happened, was special to him. She didn't take the news about the STD or his other partners very well at all, but it was better that she knew.

Johnny hoped that the pettiness had finally come to an end. He was wrong.

He was mopping the floor of the practice room in the back of the main music room when n walked Jenna. A lot of guys thought she was hot. She didn't do anything for Johhny. He wasn't into blue eyed blondes. As far as Johnny was concerned, only his mom could do justice to blonde hair and blue eyes. Plus Jenna was fat. She wasn't aware of that, however, seeing as she always wore skimpy clothes. Alli could rock that mini skirt way better! thought Johnny. But Alli's a lady and would never be seen in that.

Jenna walked seductively toward Johnny, or tried to anyway. Johnny took off the headphones he was listening to.

"Hey Johnny DiMarco," God her voice was annoying. If Alli's voice was high pitched, Jenna sounded like Minnie Mouse on helium. "I've seen you around school."

"Your eyes work, good." he replied with his trademark sarcasm. Johnny. Who knew a set up when he saw one, decided to play along. He was immune to Jenna's flirting. When she mentioned the possibility of a medical condition that might prevent him from hooking up with her, he decided to put an end to the game.

"Your friend, Alli, is the only girl I want," he told her truthfully. Jenna turned and ran out of the practice room. There was some sort of performance going on in the main room and there was a bunch of people in there.

"He loves you, Alli" Jenna squealed. Her voice echoed. She was wearing a wire. All those people had heard Johnny's confession. Some cheered while others laughed. Johnny didn't know how he was going to live this down.

The next day, Johnny visited Alli at her locker. Jenna and Clare left so the two of them could have some privacy. Why did Alli always have to look so good when things between them were so bad?

"You hold all the cards," he told her, using the lingo from Poker, the game they played when they first met. "Are you upping the stakes?" For the first time ever, Johnny had relinquished control to a girl.

"I can't play with someone I don't trust," she replied. "Game over." Fair enough.

"Bhandari," said Johnny. "It may not have been my first time, but it was the first time with someone I actually cared about."

"Goodbye Johnny," she said and walked away.

Johnny was hoping Alli would take him back but maybe it was a good thing that she didn't. There was no guarantee that something like this wouldn't happen again.

Both of them were tired of the games.

Whew! Sorry for the long chapter, but if you got this far, I thank you for your patience. I know some of the events and dialogue from "Shoot to Thrill" and "You Be Illin'" weren't exactly accurate and I hope you'll all forgive me.

Only the epilogue is left. It'll be short, I promise.