"Dear Clarence,..." ~a teen idol story

Little white lies

Johnny was emotionally exhausted when he finally returned home from school.
His mom was preparing dinner and to his positive surprise, Sid was nowhere to be seen.

"Where's the old man?" Johnny asked and Laura Lawrence, his mother, just shook her head.

She was unusually quiet and Johnny walked up to her.

"Mom? Are you alright?"

He noticed bruises around her upper arm, like someone had grabbed her with too much force and started to breathe heavily. "Mom? Did he hurt you?"

Laura shook her head. "I'm fine, sweetie, we just had an argument and.."

"No! He hurt you and I.."

"You won't do anything, okay? Promise me!" she looked at her son with sad, desperate eyes. Johnny swallowed down his anger and nodded. "Okay.." he said quietly and she kissed his cheek.
"Thank you, baby. Don't worry about me, you just relax a bit after your first day as a senior, okay? Oh and I think there's a letter for you. Just someone completely misspelled your last name, I think? It's on your desk. I call you when dinner is ready!"

Johnny's heart skipped a beat when he heard about the letter, but he didn't want to leave his mother alone now. Sid had never harmed them physically so far and he had promised himself if that ever happened, he wouldn't stay silent any longer. But his mom shooed him away so he decided to think about it later and walked to his room to check if it really was a letter from Daniel or just something else.
Daniel wouldn't misspell his name, since he didn't even know it.
When he picked up the letter and read "J. Clarence" on the envelope, he immediately felt dizzy.
J.? Why J.? There was no way Daniel could know.. Why did Clarence suddenly sound way too close to Lawrence?? He might as well have signed with something like Johnathan.. or Johnny? Why hadn't he thought this through??

Johnny flipped the envelope around and it was really sent via mail this time and not delivered in person. The address was Daniel LaRusso in Encino, his real address? He gave him his actual address?

"Well, now that you sit at my lunch table, it doesn't matter much anymore anyway, right?" Johnny mumbled and sat down on his bed. His heart was beating fast when he unfolded the letter, but while he was reading, he slowly calmed down.
He needed to read it twice before he even started to realize the words written to him.
The way Daniel LaRusso was opening up to him so sudden felt surreal...
That he actually still owned his first letter felt even more crazy than everything else..
His words meant something to Daniel back then and even until now.. He kept his first letter.. He knew it so well, that he even recognized Clarence as the same person...

"But you don't need a connection to the outside world anymore, do you?"

Johnny blinked away a tear, thinking back to how he treated Daniel earlier that day, while he was reading how he wasn't okay and how desperately he wanted to connect with someone..
He was that someone in this letter and he could have been that someone in the real world, but he messed it all up.
Should he even write him back? Should he pretend not to know that he was at the same high school now? That they even met and were locker neighbors? That Daniel almost sat on his lap at lunch break? Or that he smashed him against the soccer goal and basically threatened him...

Johnny dropped back on the mattress and stared at the ceiling for a while.

"Dammit.." he cursed silently and wiped over his eyes. He got up and sat down at his desk, starting to write a reply.

"Hi Daniel,

Thank you for your reply and for opening up to me. That means a lot. Don't worry, everything you tell me is safe with me.
I can't believe you're actually remembering my first letter, that feels so surreal but also good.