de facto 〖 ponyboy curtis 〗

eleven.

Jo-Lynn

Inhale.

Exhale.

With every hit she felt herself relaxing more and more. It had been three days since the incident with Ponyboy at Jay's and Jo hadn't left her room after that night. Usually prejudicial run-ins didn't phase the girl but it was really the way the night ended that put her on edge.

She thought a lot about Ponyboy: partly to keep her mind off of the real issue at hand but also because she had no idea if he could really handle what it would mean if he were with her. There would be certain restaurants they can't eat at, certain dates they couldn't have, certain places he could never walk around with her by his side, constant stares from strangers, millions of questions, explaining, debating, and more. Jo-Lynn knew he wanted to help that night and he'd likely wanna help any other night something like that happened, but he couldn't help, she thought. She wanted to leave well enough alone. She wondered if he'd let that happen.

That night, though, she wished the worst thing that had happened was she couldn't eat at that two-star restaurant because everything else made her want to curl up and never leave the house, something she should've done instead of going with her friends, which she thought would calm her mind.

"Jo?" Her momma's voice called softly from behind the door, knocking before coming in. Jo quickly put out the joint she had, knowing her mother didn't wanted her smoking around her. "You feelin' alright? I ain't seen ya' in days."

She shook her head, 'fixing' her hair behind her ears, not that it really fixed it. It wasn't like she cared. "Not really, momma."

The older woman took a seat beside her daughter, running her hand through Jo's matted and frizzy hair. "Your brother told me about Willy." The woman sighed and shook her head. Jo's mom never wanted her daughter to experience something so heartbreaking, sadly, though, it was damn near inevitable. It wasn't fair, how everything happened. It made Jo-Lynn angry and sad and confused and it hurt, not even just emotionally. Her heart hurt for the person she's just lost. Willy was her best friend from childhood and though they'd grown apart after she moved schools, he'd always hold a special place in her heart, and he knew that.

"I just wish I could change everything from that day. I wish I'd come straight home from school. Then I wouldn't have felt like beggin' everyone to go out with me. I wish—"

"I know you do, babycakes. You'll keep wishin' until you realize it ain't your fault."

"It is, momma. I wanted to go out."

"The only ones whose fault it is is the ones who attacked y'all."

Jo sighed and laid her head in her mom's shoulder, she couldn't keep her inner voices at bay. I shouldn't have left him. None of us should've. It's my fault, I'll never get to see him again and it's my fault.

"How do you deal with this momma? You and Cal? And Uncle Red?"

"It takes time, honey, but you gotta move on." Jo knew her momma was right and she wanted to. All she could feel, though, was guilt. She'd heard plenty of stories from parents of friends and older relatives from her home in Georgia but none of it felt real until now. If they could be okay she could too, though. Right?

.

"Hey, where've you been I ain't seen you in days." Ponyboy asks Jo quietly, as she takes her seat. She was late to class. Something she almost never was. It must've been something important.

"Home. Just couldn't leave my room."

"Why? It couldn't have been just what happened at Jays?"

She shook her head, not looking up from her papers on the desk where she began to write her heading and began on the notes that had been writen on the chalkboard. "It's not that. It's way more."

"Well, you can—"

"Curtis. Rodney. I take it one of you has something important to add to the discussion?"

They both looked up to the front of the class where he stood, staring at Jo. She sighed and rested her head in her hand, not making eye contact with him. "No sir, sorry we won't interrupt again," Ponyboy replied.

The teacher continued with the lesson but Ponyboy wanted so much to know what was going on in her mind.

'Hey, what's going on? Anything I can help with? I'm sorry if I overstepped the other day I just was hoping they'd do something about it.'

He passed the note quickly when Ainsley's back was turned and Jo read it and sighed again. She didn't want to tell him through a note...

She grabbed her blue pen and wrote right below his words:

'We can't talk about it right now. We can talk later if you still wanna. And it's okay, I understand just you don't know what kind of position it put me in. Just scared me a little. I'm alright about it, though.'

He got the note and felt a little better knowing she wasn't mad at him. That was the last thing he wanted.

'Ok, how about we go to the library at lunch?'

She read it then looked at Ponyboy and nodded, tucking the note into her backpack.

He was wondering what was so important that she wasn't at school for three days. Luckily it was Friday now and hopefully she'd let him make her feel better, whatever he needed to do.