de facto 〖 ponyboy curtis 〗

ten.

Ponyboy

"Hey, Jo-Lynn," Ponyboy began kind of awkward, his mind still reeling from his dream only two nights ago.

"Hey, Ponyboy," she replies, barely looking his way as she gathered all her things together from the tiny locker.

"Hey, uh, what are you doin' after school? I'm not doin' much and wanted to know if you'd probably wanna hang?"

She smiled and closed the little metal door and looked at the boy sheepishly, "Why are you talkin' to me right now? People might start to talk about you."

"Who cares? I can't talk to who I wanna talk to in the halls at the end of the day? I want to hang with you." Jo shrugged and ignored her mind which told her he was being very naïve but he didn't care. Something about Jo-Lynn right there made him not care who saw. He was a little worried about the guys because he knew he'd be teased but she was more important to him at this moment.

"Well, I'm not very busy. I was going to do some stuff but I don't have to."

"What stuff? I can tag along."

They made their way to the front of the school and Ponyboy offered to hold her bag for her which she agreed to. "I don't know if it's your thing."

"Try me." They made their way out of the door and her voice lowered, not wanting anyone else to hear and get her in trouble.

"Have you ever smoked before? Not cigarettes?"

"Uh, no. My brother'll kill me if I did and he found out. He hardly wants me smokin' cigarettes."

"Well that was all."

Ponyboy has always been curious about marijuana, his friends smoked it sometimes but he'd heard it was a gateway drug. The drug itself didn't scare him, but it definitely made him think of Darry lecturing him on why all drugs were bad and going to distract him from what he really needed to focus on. Dally had been high before plenty of times but he's never really talked about it. Now he couldn't stop his mind from going all over the place.

"Are you okay? Does it make you uncomfortable?"

"No! No it's not that."

"Forget I mentioned it, it's not really that big a deal."

He couldn't, though. He was a curious person, he had to know now. "Do you smoke it a lot?"

She shrugged, they were finally far enough from the school that she was comfortable speaking at her normal level. "I don't know, it depends on whether or not I got a job. I don't really get much extra money, so whenever I have a few dollars; maybe once or twice a week. Usually when I'm stressed I'll put together some cash for it."

"You're not addicted or anything?"

She shook her head and giggled, "Nope, if I smoke a lot for a while but have to stop I don't really have anything bad happen like no headaches or cravings or bad mood swings or anything. Well, sometimes mood swings but that's because I have them anyway."

"Could I try it?"

"Would you get in trouble?

"Probably."