CHAPTER TWO

The One Time We Were Actually Excited About School

—————

The next day, Kenny, Kyle, and Stan all showed up at Cartman’s house one at a time, each of them looking absolutely, positively pissed off.

Kyle was the first to yell at him. “Cartman, what the hell are you up to this time?”

Cartman, who was lazily lying on his couch and staring at the television, didn’t bother to look up at him. “The fuck are you talkin’ about, Jew?”

“YOU KNOW VERY WELL WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT! AND I HAVE A NAME!!”

“Yeah, Cartman, if you’re trying to pull a prank on us, it’s not working,” Stan grumbled, crossing his arms. Kenny nodded silently in agreement, but still looked completely furious.

Cartman rolled his brown eyes at his three frenemies. “Again, I’ve got no idea what you’re talking about. Do y’all have sand in your vaginas or somethin’?”

Kyle flipped him off angrily. “Oh, fuck you.”

Cartman shrugged and stood up from the couch. “If you guys are just looking for a reason to be pissed at me, keep looking, because for once I have done absolutely nothing wrong.” His gaze settled on the visibly indignant Kyle and he cracked a rude grin. “But I do have some news that might make you all super jealous.”

Stan rolled his eyes. “Let’s hear it, then, fatass. What’s your ‘super important news?’”

Cartman’s smirk got even wider, and off of the coffee table he picked up a neatly typed letter that looked suspiciously similar to the letters that the other three had gotten. He waved the paper in Kyle’s face. “I got into a fancy schoo-ool! I got into a fancy schoo-ool!” he gloated.

Kenny, Kyle, and Stan all looked at each other in pure shock. So it wasn’t a prank? Cartman didn’t do it?

“But—how?!” Stan exclaimed, his mouth agape in confusion.

“I guess I’m just super smart. Way smarter than Kahl.”

Kyle rolled his eyes. “My name is Kyle. Not Kahl.”

“Shut up, Kahl, no one likes you. Except for Stan, but he’s retarded. Aaaaaanyway, I bet you guys are feeling very sad that you didn’t get a cool scholarship, but don’t worry, I’ll keep rubbing it in your faces—”

Kenny cut him off. “But we did, Cartman. We all got letters too.”

Cartman froze. “Wha—huh?”

Stan nodded. “That’s why we were all pissed at you! We thought you were pranking us!”

“The fuck?” Cartman muttered, crossing his arms. “I’m genuinely offended. This is not the type of prank I would pull. My evil schemes are much less lame.”

The other three shared another glance.

Kyle threw his arms up in frustration. “Then what the hell is going on? There’s no way we actually got into a fancy-ass boarding school. We aren’t that smart.”

“It’s definitely not a scam, either,” Stan piped up. “I checked out the website. Looks very legit. And also really cool. They’ve got so much fun shit to do there.”

“I looked it up too,” Kenny replied. “It looked awesome. And yeah, definitely legit.”

“So then…we actually all got full scholarships to a cool-ass boarding school in Alaska…?”

The four friends stared at each other for a few moments. There was still an air of confusion in the room, which ended when they all burst out cheering.

“FUCK YEAH!” Kenny exclaimed, throwing his arms up in celebration.

“We are SO AWESOME!” Kyle yelled. “My parents will be SO proud of me!”

Stan jumped up onto the couch. “I never thought I would ever be excited about a school, but the website said they had cool-ass classes like self-defense and making robots!” he announced with an aura of excitement. “Plus, I’ve been waiting for an excuse to leave this dumb town.”

“This is SO FUCKING EPIC, you guys!” Cartman agreed.

Kyle paused, and a bit of a worried look replaced his formerly ecstatic expression. “It’s really far away, though. What if our parents don’t let us go?”

“’Course they will,” Stan responded nonchalantly, his blue eyes twinkling with enthusiasm. “There’s no way in hell that they’d pass up the opportunity to send their annoying-ass teenage boys to a boarding school for free.”

“Fair enough.”

The four kids flopped down onto the sofa, and Cartman’s mother Liane walked into the room. “Hello boys, what’s going on?”

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Almost immediately, Cartman leaped off the sofa and clasped his hands together, giving his mom a pleading look. “Moooooooooooom, can I go to a cool fancy school with my frieeeeeennnds?”

Liane raised her perfect eyebrows in slight confusion. “A…fancy school…?”

Cartman handed the paper to his mother, his brown eyes still widened in fake innocence.

Liane read it over. “It’s, um, in Alaska…?”

“Yeah.”

Liane gave a weak smile. “Uh, sure, sweetie. I guess so.” She paused. “Now, you boys have fun hanging out.” She left the room hurriedly.

Cartman smirked. “See? Easy.”

Stan narrowed his deep blue eyes. “For you, maybe. You’re basically the boss of your mom. I swear to god, she has Stockholm syndrome of somethin’.”

“Shut up, asshole. At least she loves me.”

“She’s scared of you, dickhole. Understandably.”

“Fear is basically love.”

Stan, always one to prioritize empathy, shook his head in disapproval. “You’re a fuckin’ sociopath, dude.”

Cartman rolled his eyes in response. “Tell me something I don’t know.”

“You haven’t changed since elementary school,” Kyle muttered, pulling out his phone so he could text his parents about the scholarship situation. After sending the message, he stuffed his phone back into his jacket pocket. “Makes me wonder who your next Scott Tenorman’ll be.”

“We’ll see.”

Kyle’s phone pinged with a notification and he opened his messages. Upon seeing that his mom had replied, he announced, “My mom says she’s ‘very proud of me for getting a scholarship, but we need to talk about it later tonight when we’re both home.’”

“My parents’ll most likely let me go,” Kenny said with a shrug. “They don’t really give a crap, but sometimes I can spin that to my advantage.” He gave a mischievous grin.

“I don’t think my parents would mind too much either. Dad’s too busy getting high and Mom would thankfully be happy for me,” Stan said.

“Your dad’s an fucktard, Stan,” Cartman chirped. He picked up the remote and turned on the television, opening Netflix.

“Says the guy who doesn’t even have a dad,” chided Kyle, rolling his hazel eyes. “And turn off Hype House. Nobody likes that dumb shit.”

“First of all: fuck you. Second of all: my house, my rules. And my number one rule is: always piss Kyle off whenever the opportunity is presented. And since you hate this show, I’m going to play it.”

Kyle gave a huff of annoyance. “You’re a dildo.”

Cartman flipped him off, and Kenny burst out laughing.

Stan pinched the bridge of his nose. “How are all of us somehow way less mature than we were a few years ago? I swear, at this point that school is gonna revoke our scholarships before we even get there.”

“They’d better not fucking do that because the website said there was a pool.” Kenny ran a hand through his messy blonde hair and smirked. “And you know what that means.”

“What?”

“Sexy people in swimsuits, dude.”

Stan sighed at this. “I swear to God, Kenny, you are such a perv.”

Kenny did not argue that statement; he, as well as everyone else who had ever met him, was aware of the fact that his sexuality was simply “horny.”

“Don’t act like you don’t want to see a certain someone shirtless, Stan,” Cartman jeered. He didn’t actually know about Stan’s hopefully-not-obvious crush on Kyle and only liked to tease the two about their relationship giving off major homosexual vibes. He was Eric Cartman, after all, and Eric Cartman was a douche.

Stan felt heat pool in his face and hoped it wasn’t noticeable. He tried his best not to look over at Kyle, who seemed somewhat oblivious.

“You’re blushing, dude,” Kyle commented. “You’re totally thinking of someone. Who?”

Cartman and Kenny shared a disbelieving glance. Was Kyle seriously that clueless?

The answer was yes. Yes, he absolutely was. And so was Stan, making any chance of a confession extremely unlikely, at least not in the near future.

Stan flushed even more, if that was possible. He refused to meet Kyle’s curious eyes. “Um, n-no one,” he lied.

Kyle shrugged and leaned back against the sofa. “Whatever. You don’t have to tell me. I’m just your super-best-friend, is all,” he teased.

Stan smiled awkwardly, visibly sweating. “So, anyway, what d’ya Alaska’s like?” he asked, trying to rid himself of his awkward and embarrassed feeling by changing the subject. He nervously twisted a strand of his dark hair in between two fingers.

“I’m betting it’s just like South Park, only…even colder,” Kenny suggested. “Guess I might need to go back to my old habit of covering my whole face with my hood.”

Kyle laughed. “I remember that. God, no one could ever understand what you were saying. Your voice was always muffled.”

A sly grin crept onto Kenny’s face, revealing the small gap between his two front teeth. “Doesn’t matter to me if nobody understands what I say. My sex appeal speaks for itself.”

“But so does your dirty-ass mouth, you horndog.” Kyle elbowed him roughly and smirked, rolling his eyes.

Cartman scoffed. “Yeah Kenny, you’re a broke piece of shit and a slut.”

“Your mom’s a slut too, Cartman. Maybe I can fuck her,” Kenny retorted, and since nobody else could tell if he was joking or not, their conversation ended there.

—————

Kyle’s house was always either silent or unbearably chaotic. When he came home from Cartman’s house that day, it was the former.

Kyle tossed his hat onto the counter. He rarely took off his hat, except to wash it and to sleep, of course. He thought of his hair as too difficult and annoying to deal with, so he found it easier to just cover it up. His hair used to be longer, like a hockey-style haircut, but he had recently cut it so it was shorter at the bottom and a bit longer on top, which made it a bit easier. Stan said he thought Kyle’s hair was cool. Kyle wasn’t sure if he believed him, and assured his best friend that he was lucky he didn’t have to deal with a stupid mess of ginger curls.

From looking at the time on the clock he came to the conclusion that Ike was at hockey practice, and his dad was at work, which explained the silence. It was only his mom who was home, and she was sitting in the living room watching television.

“Hey, Mom,” he greeted, and then sat down on a chair a few feet away from the couch.

“Hello, Kyle.” His mother smiled. “Who were you visiting? Was it Stan?”

“Nah, we were all at Cartman’s house,” he corrected.

His mother raised an eyebrow. “Isn’t that the young man that you, er, strongly dislike?”

“Dislike is not a strong enough word. I hate him,” Kyle scoffed. “Anyway, you wanted to talk about the school thing, right? What’s your answer to that?”

“Oh, I have to wait for your father to get home so I can talk to him about it, but in my opinion I think you should go, sweetie.” She smiled at her son.

“Really?”

“Yes, you’ve always worked very hard in school and now its paying off. I’m very proud of you.”

Kyle beamed in response to that. Those last five words were the ones he lived to hear.