no ‘cause i will stay until 3am awake thinking about how johnny cade’s death shook me so much when i first read about it and how much it continues to hurt. because when i think about it, i can’t help but feel like he was literally robbed of his life, and we were robbed of seeing him and ponyboy grow up together and stay together no matter what. 

can’t stop thinking about how ponyboy never got to see johnny’s slow but sure recovery and how johnny missed all the support and love from the gang and all the all-nighters they all pulled thinking that they could lose johnny at any moment given if they so much dared to close their eyes. 

we missed ponyboy reading book after book for months to keep johnny company, to keep him motivated, to keep him away from intrusive thoughts and harmful situations. we never got to see the late nights they stayed up smoking and trying to not talk about the trauma and pain they went through during those damned days and bringing up the topic at all costs altogether. 

we never got to see johnny getting better and dally feeling reassured about that, about the fact that the both of them are there and are okay and they'll keep moving forward one way or another. we couldn’t get to see johnny and pony graduating and pony packing his bags to go to college to another state and johnny and him embracing by the train not as a goodbye but as a ‘we’re gonna see each other in three months, don’t cry’. 

 johnny could never take his chance at making a life for himself and learning to love his own persona, moving away from his parents with the help of the gang and start working to earn his own money and feeling accomplished and cherished by his friends and finally feeling like he’s worth all he’s getting. 

and we never got to see pony and him exchanging letters with lengthy updates and johnny giving him a little piece of the gang in each folded piece of paper he sent in pony’s way, and the awaited reunions by the station house during christmas or spring break or summer holidays. 

and what hurts the most, irrevocably, is that nobody got to see johnny grow up and fall in love and make new friendships and live adventures as well as mundane moments in life and have his own path to follow freely. and yes, this is what pains me the most when i think about it, that the gang and us never got to see johnny having a future, nobody got to see johnny growing up. 

and i think about what we could have gotten after the events of the book, about pony growing up without his best friend and missing all the things they could have done and become, and missing those letters and those reunions and those books and those stories. and maybe he would have fulfilled his wishes and would have got himself a college degree and a nice job and a family of his own one day, with the memories of who no longer were there anymore falling upon him as a foggy cluster, that one denim jacket never used again and the lot always empty and cold.