CHAPTER ONE

Letters

The entire classroom erupted into chatter and excitement as soon as the very final bell rang for the day, signaling the official end of the long school year. All of the students immediately started stuffing their books and papers into their backpacks and pooling out of the classroom doors. Everyone looked relieved, including the teachers.

“FUCK YES!” Cartman exclaimed as he roughly shoved through the crowds of students and into the hallway, his three friends trailing behind him. “It’s finally summer vacation!”

“Thank GOD we don’t have to deal with stupid freshman year ever again,” Kenny replied with a grin. “I think I’d die if I ever saw another paper with the words ‘Ninth Grade Math Homework’ on it.” He pulled the hood of his orange parka over his disheveled blonde hair as he and his four friends pushed through the front doors of the small high school building. The freezing air hit them in an instant, chilling them to the bone and causing them to pull their coats tighter around their bodies.

“I wish it felt like summer,” complained Kyle, his pale cheeks flushing at the feeling of the cold air on his skin. “It’s fucking freezing.”

“Well, duh. We live in the fucking Colorado mountains,” muttered his best friend Stan, who pulled out his phone and lazily scrolled through it for a moment before shoving it back into the pocket of his brown jacket. “The weather app says it’s supposed to warm up in, like, July.”

“That’s in almost TWO MONTHS!” Cartman whined. “I wanna go in my pool!”

“You don’t even have a real pool, Cartman, it’s just one of those cheap plastic blow-up ones,” Kenny said, rolling his eyes. “Stop bragging about it.”

“You’re just jealous because your family could NEVER afford one, Kinny.” Cartman smirked, jabbing roughly at Kenny’s side with his pointer finger. Kenny swatted his hand away in annoyance, and wondered, once again, why he even hung out with Cartman in the first place. Honestly, Cartman was just a frenemy. None of the other three could put up with him for too long before his attitude drove them to the brink of insanity.

A cold gust of wind swirled through the air, and all three of them shivered.

“Ugh, this sucks ass,” Kyle griped, pulling his hat tighter over his fluffy ginger hair. “I’m probably gonna get sick.”

“Only because you have a shitty immune system,” Stan responded with a shrug, his striking blue eyes trained on the sidewalk in front of him. He kicked a few pebbles across the concrete and then looked up at the rustling branches and leaves of the trees around them. “God, it’s so windy today. And the sky is all grey and cloudy.”

“You sound so emo, dude,” Cartman commented.

Stan rolled his eyes. “Stop projecting. You’re the only one of us who writes ‘deep profound poetry.’”

“I’ll have you know that it is very profound, emo gaywad.”

Kenny snorted. “Don’t act like all of us didn’t have an emo phase in seventh grade.”

Kyle tensed up and covered his face with his hands. “God damn it, we need to make a pact to NEVER talk about that ever again. We were so fucking cringe,” he groaned, thinking back to the unfortunate time in the friend group’s life when they all were committed to wearing heavy black eyeliner and talking about death. Never again.

Stan laughed. “No argument there.”

“So what’s everyone doing this summer?” Kenny asked, picking up a stick from the side of the sidewalk and beginning to drag it across the snowy sidewalk.

Kyle shrugged. Eh, y’know, regular stuff. We’re going on a trip to California for a week at the end of July.”

“I’m not doing anything,” Stan said bitterly. “Dad got super drunk last night and blew a ton of savings on advertising for the farm, so we can’t go anywhere. God, Mom’s so pissed.”

“Well, sucks to be you,” Cartman replied without a hint of sympathy in his voice. “I get to go to a waterpark.” He turned to Kenny, a malevolent grin on his face. “I bet you aren’t gonna do anything fun, you poor piece of shit.”

As a response, Kenny gave him the finger.

The group continued their often not-so-friendly banter as they walked toward the bus stop, and once they got there they waved to Stan, who had to take a different bus because he lived an hour away from town (which totally sucked ass).

Kyle hated this because Stan was his best friend, and they were, without a doubt, extremely close, which often received relentless snarky teasing from Cartman, who saw the pair as a hopelessly romantic gay couple. Which wasn’t true, much to Kyle’s secret dismay, yet he would never admit that he had liked Stan as more than a friend since elementary school. Cartman would give him so much shit for that, and Kyle sincerely doubted that Stan would ever feel the same way.

The scenery at the bus stop was exactly how it always had been, but that day it felt relatively dreary. It was supposed to be summer, for fuck’s sake, yet it was windy and snowy and everyone was freezing their asses off.

Kenny groaned as he noticed a few small snowflakes drifting down from the cloudy sky. “The hell?”

“Get used to it, Kinny,” Cartman said simply. “Don’t be a pussy.”

“I’m not a pussy, fatass.”

“Aye, don’t call me a fatass, god damn it!! I AM NOT FAT!” Cartman exclaimed unhappily.

Kyle and Kenny exchanged glances. Kyle rolled his eyes. Cartman had been fat for his entire life, but would never admit it. That was just another “perk” of the heavyset fifteen-year-old’s malicious personality: a disregard for having any self-awareness whatsoever.

A few moments later the bus pulled up in front of them, and they all climbed on to go back home and begin to enjoy their newfound free time as the euphoric realization of two and a half months off of school sunk in.

—————

Stan walked up the creaking wooden steps that led to the front door of his house and walked inside, immediately being immersed in the usual smells of his farmhouse: his mom’s cooking, alcohol, marijuana, and the air fresheners that his older sister insisted on placing in every room, thinking it would cover up the musty odor of weed, but it actually just mixed with everything else and contributed to the overwhelming overlap of smells.

With a sigh, he began trudging up the stairs that led to his room. Everyone’s busy anyway. Mom’s probably in the middle of making dinner, Dad’s probably in the barn getting high, and Shelly’s probably working on her college applications.

He couldn’t help but add a bitter thought to the end of that: Guess they’re just too busy for me.

He immediately shoved that thought out of his mind, a bit guilty for thinking that. They were trying their best.

“Stanley, honey?” It was his mom’s voice.

“Yeah?” he eagerly called back from the top of the stairs.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

“Hope you had a nice last day of school. By the way, something came in the mail for you today. Looked important.”

Stan slowly started back down the stairs. That was weird. He wasn’t even expecting anything. Important, huh?

He headed into the kitchen, and his mom pointed to a stack of mail sitting on the disorganized kitchen table. He shuffled through it and eventually found an envelope with his name. It was the kind of envelope that boring old tax stuff came in. Apparently, that’s what made it important.

Before he got a chance to open it, his phone vibrated from his jacket pocket. Walking up the stairs to his room and shoving the envelope in his pocket, he opened the group chat (which was quite accurately titled “people who barely tolerate each other”, courtesy of Kyle). He flopped onto his bed and read the messages.

——

KENNY: yoooo

KENNY: are u guys busy tmrw

KENNY: except for u cartman i already know you wont have anything to do

KYLE: HA

CARTMAN: fuck you kenny

KENNY: i bet you’d loooooove to do that cartman ;) ;) ;)

STAN: lmao

CARTMAN: tf

CARTMAN: gay whore

KENNY: lolololol

KENNY: anyway

KENNY: let’s hsng out tmrw

KENNY: hang*

CARTMAN: its summer dude

CARTMAN: I dont wanna hang out with you gaywads

STAN: dude

KENNY: pls

KENNY: im boredd

KYLE: ok

KYLE: where should we hang out

KENNY: raisins

STAN: hell no

KENNY: they have good chicken wings tho

KENNY: and also im horny

KYLE: youre always horny

KENNY: ik

KENNY: but like

KENNY: thats part of my personality

CARTMAN: lets hang out at kfc

KYLE: fatass

CARTMAN: fuck off kyle

STAN: how about we just go to cartman’s house?

CARTMAN: no

KYLE: ok

KENNY: sounds good

KENNY: see u all tmrw

——

—————

After closing out of his messages and watching his cracked phone screen go dark, Kenny laughed. His friends were definitely entertaining. And it helped distract him from the fact that school was over and he now officially had no escape from his crumbling, cramped house.

His smile faded when he heard his dad yelling from the living room: “KENNY, GO GET THE FUCKING MAIL! YOUR MOTHER’S BEEN ON MY ASS ABOUT IT ALL DAY!”

Not even a “how was your last day of school,” huh?

With an eyeroll, he stood up from his bed and entered the living room, maneuvering through the piles of cracked empty glass bottles, stacks of stained and crumbled papers, and various random items that littered the unvacuumed floor. Kenny hoped that someday he’d be able to walk through the living room without having to watch out for all the clutter.

Silently sliding past his parents, who, like always, were arguing and had beer cans in hand. Drunk retards, he thought bitterly, shaking his head. He pushed open the front door and was met with the cold, crisp air outside, a refreshing contrast to the musty air inside. He walked over the the mailbox, which was bent from when his mom accidentally drove into it, and as soon as he opened it a crumpled stack of letters. It was clear that nobody had gotten the mail in a while.

With a frustrated groan, Kenny crouched down and collected the envelopes off of the ground before the wind could blow them away, and fished out any that hadn’t fallen out of the mailbox. As he was walking back to his house, he noticed that one of the letters had his name on it.

That couldn’t be right. He never got mail.

Curious but patient, he shoved the letter into the pocket of his worn-out parka, and with a heavy sigh, he walked back into his house, tossed the mail carelessly onto the dirty kitchen counter, and locked himself in his room once again.

He sat down on his bed and pulled the wrinkled envelope from his pocket. He looked at it for a moment, studying his name typed neatly in black ink in the top left corner. In the top right corner was a fancy-looking insignia that looked like a spiky tree in front of a mountain.

“Hm.” He tore it open. Inside was a piece of paper, folded into thirds as to fit into the envelope. He unfolded it, his greenish-blue eyes scanning the words curiously.

WELCOME TO

EVERGREEN ACADEMY

Hello,

This letter was sent to inform you that Evergreen Academy, one of the nation’s most prestigious boarding schools, is delighted to offer you a full scholarship to the academy. This scholarship will cover all academic fees.

Evergreen Academy is a boarding school located in the Aleutian mountain range of western Alaska. We offer a diverse academic experience and an eclectic curriculum, including but not limited to classes that teach self-defense, advanced mathematics and physics, coding, and engineering. Learn more about our classes at EvergreenAcademy.edu.

If you are interested in attending, please contact us through the phone number (XXX) XXX-XXXX, or contact us through our website mentioned above. The deadline for confirming your enrollment is August 3rd. We will provide details of the start of the term and specific locations.

We hope to see you there,

Dr. Emmiline Eastwood, Principal

“What the fuck?” he muttered, completely and utterly confused.

Kenny wasn’t exactly sure how to feel about all of this. It was hard for him to imagine himself attending a fancy-ass boarding school; wearing a uniform and rooming with snobby douche-canoes. Mostly because his family was poor as hell, and he wasn’t a privileged brat who could pay his way to the top. He would, however, sleep his way to the top. Without question.

But that wasn’t the reason he got offered a fucking scholarship.

Actually, he had no idea why he got a scholarship in the first place. He wasn’t a genius or a prodigy or anything like that. Sure, he was smart, kind of, but not fancy boarding school scholarship-level of smart!

This had to be a fluke of some sort.

But the letter was directly addressed to him. His name was on the envelope. It didn’t look like a mistake, but it was definitely hard to believe that it wasn’t.

A prank, maybe? If Cartman was behind this, Kenny planned to kick his ass when they hung out tomorrow.

This sure is weird as hell, he thought to himself. Maybe I’ll get some answers soon.