Chapter Text
Johnny headed all the way back to New Coventry with his friends after being caught egging mansions in Old Bullworth Vale. They lost Jimmy on the way, but he didn’t mind. Arriving at his wall phone at the tenements, he sent off the rest of his friends when he saw that he’d missed an important call. It was Lola.
They hadn’t spoken for two weeks. Two weeks prior, Johnny got himself sent to Happy Volts. He was sent there for a week, his stay overlapping with the near end of Gary’s 12 week sentence. He became the first person from Bullworth to catch sight of him since his expulsion.
Johnny was sent there after finding Lola out with Chad. He had a day-long breakdown, where even Peanut admitted he really “went crazy.” He lost his voice from yelling so much, tore up his own house, and got in a huge fight with the Preps where he broke Chad’s arm. This led Derby to finally place a strict ban on dating Lola for his clique.
This time at Happy Volts, Johnny had no Jimmy to rescue him. Jimmy was busy with his friends and girlfriend. He was trying to keep out of the cliques’ antics for the summer. So this time, Johnny faced the consequences of his actions, processing that maybe there was something wrong with him.
While there, he didn’t see Gary much despite them both being in the same “violent tendencies” B block. They were kept in their cells most of the day. Gary noticed Johnny a few times from a distance, but didn’t say anything. Johnny saw Gary from outside the window of his cell leaving the girls’ shower. Not knowing his secret, he’d assumed he was a pervert along with his many other defects.
They saw each other when they were let outside, and they then spoke for the only time in front of The Watcher. Gary asked him about Petey and Jimmy, to be met with an “I dunno” followed by raving about how Lola was probably out cheating.
A week later, nearly as soon as he’d been released, Lola was also sent there for a week. Their stays there almost lined up. Lola could have had him come as a visitor, but he wasn’t going. He was still bitter over her cheating once again, and she never visited him when he was in her place anyway.
So now, as Johnny called Lola back from the tenements, they hadn’t spoken in two weeks. He didn’t even know anything about how it was for her at Happy Volts or what even got her there in the first place. Her return was this day, and he’d forgotten. He knew she’d be pissed about it.
Lola answered immediately once he called. “Johnny. What the hell Johnny. You let me get locked up with all the crazies and then you miss my call.”
“I’m sorry, Lola. I was out with the boys— and I ain’t seen you tryin’ to break me out either.”
“Ugh, whatever. You don’t treat me like a lady, I get it, Johnny.”
Johnny felt rage boil in his chest, the same kind that got him to Happy Volts too many times. “Well you ain’t been actin’ like a lady, whorin’ around with everyone. I bet that’s what got you there in the first place: you are one of the crazies, you slut.”
His assumption was correct, Lola was taking advantage of his absence and got sent to Happy Volts as a result of “whorin’ around” with none other than Algie.
The day before she was sent there and Johnny was about to be released, Lola and Algie walked around Old Bullworth Vale. She regretted taking him out, a painful resort after The Preps kept rejecting her. Algie didn’t have much use for her in the summer without homework, but she’d planned to get lunch with him since it wasn’t beyond him to pay the bill.
She glanced around and reluctantly gripped his hand, only when she was sure no one they knew was around. She paused when they walked past the windows of Aquaberry. Lola’s eyes met a short pink dress. She smiled as she saw it, imagining how well it would go with her leather jacket over it.
“I like that dress.”
Algie looked around, oblivious to the fact that she was even looking into the store.
“That dress— silly!” She called, pointing to the window. She held back her temptations to call him something meaner.
She led him into the store, pulling him by his hand. He tried to keep up in a waddle behind her.
Lola let go of his hand and quickly walked towards the dress on one of the hangers. She held it up to her shoulders. “What do you think?”
Algie glanced at her bare stomach and then to her cleavage, making him sweat nervously in fear being caught. He suddenly felt like he had to pee, as that happened when he got nervous like this. He adjusted his belt and alternated bending his two knees.
He then looked at the dress, unsure what to make of it. He squinted his eyes and adjusted his big glasses. “Uh, I think it’s pretty fly, girl!” He exclaimed in his nasally tone.
She flipped the tag, revealing the price of $300 dollars to him.
“Woah, that costs a lot!” Algie exclaimed.
Gord, who practically lived in the store, was there. He turned from browsing a clothing rack and looked at them. “That’s certainly a reasonable price for Aquaberry’s exclusive summer collection,” he scowled and narrowed his eyes at the two, “though maybe too much for people like you.”
Lola’s expression quickly changed, her brows furrowing and lips opening into a scowl. Thinking about The Preps, and now hearing the voice of one, evoked a deep rage for her. They hated her, and now hadn’t even been reciprocating her flirting after Derby’s change of rules. She grew even more angry as she imagined Pinky going into the store, buying this dress and 10 others like it carelessly with her dad’s credit card. That dress was too much for people like herself, and she’d hate for Gord to be right.
“Algie, you can buy that dress for me, right?” She asked, her tone sharp.
“Uh, I don’t know, I mean, it’s pretty pricey—”
“Well I bet Johnny would have bought it for me.” She interrupted. This was certainly a lie. Gord knew it, scoffing at her comment, knowing Johnny could barely afford his own cheap clothes.
She turned to Gord. “Or why don’t you buy it for me. I’d be willing to give you a second chance.” She told him, her tone quickly shifting to one more suggestive.
Gord puffed his chest and shook his head, letting out a conceited laugh. “I’ve moved on from poor sluts like you. I would buy it for a nice girl. Or maybe I will buy it, just for myself to spite you.” He said in his posh fake accent.
She let out a frustrated sigh. “Of course you would. Go buy that dress for yourself, you fairy. I bet your boyfriends would like that. You would buy it for me, the prettiest girl ever, if you liked girls,” she ran her hands down on Algie’s shoulders, “just like he does. Right, Algie? You aren’t gay, are you?”
“No, of course not!” Algie stammered.
He’d surprisingly never faced that accusation, as there were other things to bully him about that didn’t need to be reached for. “Pee stain” or “piss boy” were in no need of being replaced with something impersonal like “fairy” or “queer.”
“Right. I’d think that if you didn’t buy this dress for me, and you’re doing that, right?” Lola said.
“Uh, I don’t know…”
“So you’re gay?”
Gord shook his head and scoffed pompously in a high tone, not helping deny the allegation of himself being gay. He narrowed his eyes to Algie, “Don’t waste your money on sluts like her.” He advised.
Algie’s throat closed and his urge to pee grew even stronger, his face wincing as he held it in. Gord turned away from them, leaving the conversation and moving to browse another rack across the store.
“Wow. You just let him call me that? You’re buying me this dress, or I’m done with you!” Lola cried.
“I’m sorry— I can’t, Lola—”
“I know you have the money. Didn’t you, like, just buy a new set for that game you Nerds play? And that expensive bladder medicine?!”
“I’m sorry!” Algie cried again. “ I love you, Lola! Would you really leave me if I can’t?”
“Not even just that. If you don’t get me that dress, I’m like— totally gonna kill myself!” She yelled.
The whole store went quiet. Gord turned back around to watch the scene. He’d outwardly say that this was why poor people should be banned from even entering stores like Aquaberry, but truly found the whole thing exciting.
“No, Lola, please!” Algie cried, stumbling after Lola as she stormed out of the store.
He was unable to keep up with her, giving up and waddling alone back to his house. He spent the afternoon crying about losing his only prospect of love, finally pulling himself together to play nightly Grottos and Gremlins with the Nerds.
Algie kept quiet about the situation while at the clubhouse, immersing himself in G&G to try to forget. They wouldn't have anything nice to say, as they disapproved of Lola, and he felt like he might cry if he talked about it.
An hour or so into the game, Algie jumped as he felt vibrations on his chest. He kept his flip phone in a strange place in the front pocket on his white button-up. His pants pockets were now off limits for his phone, as it could break from him sitting down in his back pockets or get wet in his front pockets if he had an accident.
The Nerds around the table all looked at him as he pulled out the phone. He saw Lola’s number calling him. “Sorry, gang— let me excuse myself, or, I gotta jet!” He said, scooting away from the table and leaving to take the call.
Only a minute or so later, he waddled back into the room with a panicked expression. “Oh no, oh no, guys— this is really bad!” He cried, panicking in front of an audience of Nerds around a table.
Earnest, their grotto master, unhappy to be disturbed, looked up at him. “What.” He hissed coldly.
“I need three-hundred dollars immediately!” Algie yelled.
The group erupted with questions. Algie addressed them in a panicked stumble, “I need to buy a dress for Lola! But it’s urgent! She kinda, uh, broke up with me —I think— today because I wouldn't buy it. She said she was gonna kill herself if I didn’t buy it— and I didn’t! She just called me crying and choking and she said she’s really gonna do it! I told her to stop and that I’d get the dress for her!”
“Don’t buy it, you moron. She’s not gonna do it.” Beatrice dismissed, glaring up from her G&G cards.
“But what if she does? The Greasers would kill us all!” Bucky replied nervously. Getting beat up by The Bullies was bad enough, but The Greasers were even tougher. He shuddered at the thought.
Earnest raised his hands, trying to get everyone to settle down. “This is a serious threat. We need to call the police. They will teach that slut a lesson, that she shouldn’t mess with us.”
“But… I love her.” Algie protested, his tone turning weak. “We can’t get her… arrested?!”
Before he could protest further, Earnest was on the phone reporting Lola Lombardi making suicidal threats. He was eager to end this situation as soon as possible to resume their G&G game. He was beyond fed up with Algie and Lola.
Meanwhile, Lola was in her run-down apartment in New Coventry. She put down her old rotary phone, impressed by her own acting after her call with Algie. She continued relaxing and watching trashy reality TV on her pilling couch— living the exact lifestyle Gord was so fascinated with. She waited for Algie to arrive at her door with that dress, the dress which could give her a taste of a better lifestyle she envied.
She was startled by loud banging on her door. It didn’t sound like Algie, and would be impressively quick for him. She stood up, fixed her hair in the mirror on her wall for a moment, then answered the door.
Two police officers opened it, asking her name and for her parents. She was pulled out of her home to be sent to Happy Volts before she could explain— though even if she’d explained how her suicide threats had no intention, there still certainly would be a reason to send her there.
Now, Lola had just gotten back that morning, and on the phone Johnny made the true accusation that her cheating had to do with her sentence to Happy Volts. To refute this, she twisted the story a bit. “I tried to kill myself, Johnny.” She said in a tone of misery, aiming to make him feel as sorry as possible. She wouldn’t even say that she was lying either, attributing herself tightening the ribbon around her neck to make herself choke on the phone with Algie as her attempt.
“What? You serious?” Johnny asked, his voice shifting from angry to concerned.
“Yes I am! I felt so sorry for you and what I did.” She whined, letting out a fake sob and then a sniffle. “It was horrible ending up there. I was miserable! All those crazies there, no one would leave me alone!”
“What happened, Lola?”
Lola took the question to be about her stay. “Well Gary— he was perving on me in the showers!”
It was true that Lola was miserable at Happy Volts. In the showers, she caught sight of her reflection. Her new form showed back to her from in the rusted and mold-surrounded silver lever to the shower. She looked hideous. Her face was bare without makeup and her hair was flat with loose strands flying everywhere without grease.
She wondered how Johnny looked when he was in Happy Volts. Seeing herself reflected, she felt especially ugly. She wondered how Johnny could be so obsessed with someone like her. She was a fraud. Under her exterior, she was crazy enough to be sent to Happy Volts and completely plain without her makeup and dress.
She began to sob. She leaned on the tiled wall, black mold smearing down her back as she slid down to sit. She stared down at the drain with decades worth of hair leaking out of it, at the strange white foam perspiring from the floor, and at the mold creating artistic patterns along the edges of the floor’s tiles. She really felt like garbage, feeling like the dirty, poor, trashy whore like all of Bullworth repeated that she was. None of those words got to her head, as any attention at all was good to her, but somehow at this moment they seemed to have manifested into creating a horrible location just for her based upon them. The place they made was one where she’d get no attention, and therefore felt worthless and hideous. She was overwhelmed with regret, repeating in her mind how stupid she was to have got herself here over an Aquaberry dress and a incontinent Nerd.
The door to the showers opened. Lola remained hidden behind the wall.
An orderly spoke, “Go in, Mary. We ain’t got all day.”
The orderly shoved the back of Gary Smith, pushing him to the showers and closing the door behind him. He hated being known as that name the orderlies called him by. It was his birth name, only changed to Gary after a mispeaking that stuck. Mary Smith. It was the name of a nobody, a good girl. It didn’t fit him at all.
Unfortunately, the rumor around him wasn’t even true, the one that he used to be a girl and had a sex change: he hadn’t had a sex change. He was too young to have had the operation, but he needed one to have his sex and name legally changed. So really, officially, he was just a girl. That was what he was known as now at Happy Volts, as the staff were opposed to “fueling his delusions.”
He reluctantly stepped into the showers, hearing high-pitched sobs. They sounded oddly familiar. It wasn’t a voice he recognized here amongst the same repeated tones of screams and cries, and he knew that it must have been someone new in the asylum.
There was only a tile wall lined with showerheads separating him and this person. What scared him was how young the voice sounded. It sounded like someone his age. As usual, when there was even one other person in the communal shower, he wasn’t going to undress or bathe. Besides how his hair felt pounds heavier with grease, he otherwise wasn’t too bothered by being filthy. His odor became a tool to keep the orderlies from touching him.
Gary stayed still. He faced the wall, not undressing and still wearing the uniform of the blue-tinted elongated T-shirt and pants. He turned to the side as he heard a high shriek.
It was Lola Lombardi, wet and naked. Gary’s eyes widened, meeting with the chest of her tall figure. He wasn’t trying to admire her breasts, but it was where his eyes went. He wasn’t expecting such a sight, and one that most boys at Bullworth dreamt of.
“You pervert!” She screamed, turning quickly to grab a towel in the bin by the door. She fell on the wet floor as she tried to run, screaming once again as her feet slid from under her. She was then naked and sprawled out on the ground, a bloody gash immediately forming on a pronounced cheekbone where she landed.
She sat up, covering her chest with her hands as she met eyes with Gary again. He smirked sadistically seeing her fall and in pain. The sight of blood pleased him, one he’d been deprived of since leaving Bullworth. His eyes were empty and he hadn’t moved an inch. He didn’t apologize. Collecting himself, a pang of fear settled in after remembering he was staring at a naked girl who wished not to be looked at. He calmly turned back to the showerhead in a daze. He still said nothing. Maybe he was too ashamed to speak, or it had to do with how drugged-up he was. He scared her even more with his apathy.
Lola slid herself on the floor to the bin of towels. She stood and wrapped a towel around herself. She tried to pull open the door but it was locked. She banged on the door until an orderly answered, and then shrieked about how there was a pervert. The annoyed orderly entered to investigate her claim, only scolding Gary for not showering before dismissing it.
Thankfully for Gary, his secret wasn’t revealed: Lola wasn’t told how he was really supposed to be in the womens’ shower. Instead, they just declared her to be having some sort of episode and told her how it was wrong to be lying for attention. Lola was told this as she was dragged out of the showers and taken to a therapist. They didn’t sedate her, which they would have done to anyone else more physically threatening, such as Gary— though they hadn't been doing so at the time, not daring to approach due to his acquired odor.
Johnny sat up straight, bringing the phone closer to his mouth. “I saw Gary comin’ out of the girls’ showers when I was there too! I saw it!”
Lola felt better hearing this, knowing she wasn’t crazy to have seen that despite what the therapist and orderlies tried to make her think.
“He was pervin’ on you? He’s dead, Lola. He’s out now, Jimmy told me today. I’ll kill him!”
Lola’s face lit up. “Oh, Johnny, would you really? Go and kill him!”
She honestly loved it when Johnny was around to defend her like this, yet she also wouldn’t mind if him doing this would end him up at Happy Volts again, giving her peace and freedom to mess around with other boys. Like everyone, she hated Gary. With him being back and around, it was inevitable that he’d get beaten up in short time.
Johnny, still consumed with rage, actually took the time to think for a moment— something his therapists at Happy Volts encouraged. “Before I find him —and I don’t know how, but I will— why don’t I spend some time with you? I missed you, Lola.” He said.
Lola sighed. A date with Johnny was long overdue. Thinking about it, she was kind of happy. Johnny was definitely more handsome than the others she’d been putting up with, such as piss-scented Algie… and that was it. She really needed to get The Preps back into her. How? Maybe she needed to seduce Derby himself.
The two ended up going to the carnival. When Johnny saw Jimmy there, he took the opportunity to get information about Gary. Lola was excited when he then planned to take her out on his bike to see if they could find him. She eagerly followed him, excited to cause chaos —which was actually justified for someone seemingly a pervert— and start a fight. She held onto Johnny as they left for Old Bullworth Vale to see if they could get lucky and find Gary, Lola waiting to call backup for a hoard of Greasers to teach him a lesson if he was found.