Chapter One

Pagan Rituals and Soap Operas

AN: The basic plotline of this was inspired by the novel The Secret History. You don't need to have read that to understand this story; just know that I did not invent the idea of teenagers recreating the Bacchanalia. I also did not invent South Park, obviously. Oh yeah, and don't look for historical accuracy here because I may have mixed and matched my facts.

Stan talks in his sleep. I've known this since I was three, since that first day of preschool when he put his blue, rocket ship blanket down next to my green, Star of David one at nap time. Back then, he kind of just rambled; it didn't make sense—speaking gibberish rhymes and babbling jerky syllables. Still, for some reason, I stayed up all class listening.

It's changed a bit now, what he says—remembering conversations, quoting his favorite Bruce Willis movies, narrating his sitcom dreams. Pretty sure I heard him speaking Latin once.

This morning, though, he's mumbling something about a llama wearing an alpaca-knit sweater.

I always get up before Stan, even though I don't set alarms; I just wake up to the sun in my eyes. I've trained myself to do it, so that I can hear him.

After a while, I swing my legs off the side of the bed, then stand. "Dude."

"No…," Stan moans.

He's rolled out of his sleeping bag in the night, despite the freezing air. I kneel down next to him.

"Stan."

"You cannibal…."

"Alpacas and llamas aren't the same species, dude, and it's not cannibalism unless you eat it."

With a gentle shake, I manage to get his eyes open. He blinks a few times, then focuses on me.

"Kyle?" His voice is still half-asleep, apparently—kind of scraggly.

"You've got drool on your chin."

He wipes it off and sits up.

We started having sleepovers the third week of Kindergarten, and we've been doing it since. Except we call them study sessions now, because if Cartman heard something as gay as "sleepover," we would have to deal with him calling us fags for the rest of senior year. And, yeah, in a backwards town like South Park, that's slightly worse than "Jesus-killing Hitler-bait" and "dog-fucking hippie."

"Come on, dude; it's Monday. Ike's making sugar-free pancakes."

He stands, stretches, yawns, then rubs his eyes. Same thing he does every morning.

"God, I can't wait for Christma—winter break," he says.

I let out a slightly amused huff of breath at his avoidance of the word "Christmas." It's a habit he picked up in childhood, when the other kids would tease me about not celebrating the birth of some miracle-working talk show host.

"I know, dude. Wanna bet Mr. Garrison will assign a huge project due the day before school gets out?"

"He wouldn't do that. And even if he did, it'd probably be some report on how Erica and Jackson's relationship in All My Children relates to the modern porn industry."

I stare at him.

"Stan. What."

He rolls his head back as we walk downstairs.

"Mom loves that show. She thinks we need to spend our last moments together as a family. Watching soap operas."

A tingle shoots down my spine at "last moments." Because, really, Sharon's right; it's our senior year. Only a few more months until college. And we will get into the same colleges. We're super best friends. I'm not going anywhere without him.

But I can't tell him that. So instead I say:

"Ah. What's your dad think?"

"I don't think he thinks anymore. Not after a pack of Budweiser."

The cloying smell of syrupy goodness wafts through the air as we reach the kitchen. God, I love my brother and his sudden cooking obsession.

"I'd rather do an actual project than be forced to watch that shit," I say.

"Well, we'll see."

We sit down at the table.

"Okay, children, I want your lives to be as miserable as possible, so I'm assigning a project due the day before Christmas break," Mr. Garrison says.

I glance at Stan at the exact moment he looks at me. We grin. In the background, Cartman coughs something that sounds a lot like, "Fags."

The dusty scratching noise of chalk on blackboard tells me Mr. Garrison is writing the details, so I turn back to the front of the room. Please, God, not soap operas.

As he scribbles, he says, "Now, this'll be a team project—groups of four—and I want you all to be productive, as vain a hope as that is."

He faces us again. On the board, he's written our group members. I squint at the words. Kyle with…Stan, Cartman, and Kenny. How unexpected.

"Since winter is also a time of pagan celebrations—Yule, solstice, Kwanza, Hanukah—you're gonna be researching and reporting on ancient rites and rituals."

I blink. Now that is unexpected. A project that's actually academic.

And no soap operas.

I look at Stan again, expecting him to be looking back, but he's not. Instead, he's leaning on his elbow against the desk, frowning at the ceiling.

"Okay, team Kyle, I'm assigning you Bacchanalia. I'm sure even you can't find a way to make a drunken orgy boring."

"Drunken orgy?" Cartman says. His voice is high, like he can't believe what he's hearing. "Drunken as in beer, orgy as in sex?"

"Drunken," Mr. Garrison says, "as in wine as in Bacchanalia as in Bacchus as in the Roman god of wine. And yes, Eric: sex."

A slow, wide grin spreads across Cartman's face.

"Sweet."

I hate to admit it, but for once I agree with the anti-Semite. Oh, not for the same reasons, but still. He thinks it'll be fun, that he can just bullshit his way through the project with his infinite knowledge of being wasted and getting laid. Funny, back in elementary school, that comment would be entirely sarcastic. But since Cartman joined the wrestling team at the start of ninth grade (and helped them get to nationals), he's become less blubbery and more muscular. Weird how girls are willing to overlook psychopathy if it comes in a fit enough body.

But to me, the report just sounds interesting. Like a distraction. And a way to spend more time with Stan, which I really don't need to do because we will go to the same college.

When Mr. Garrison's done assigning all the other teams their rituals, we all head off towards the computer lab. I jog forward a bit till I'm in step with Stan.

"Dude, what's wrong?" I ask.

"Nothing," Stan says, glancing at me. "I'm just tired."

"Tired of what?"

He shakes his head a little.

"You know, just…." He waves a hand around in a vague gesture. "Reports and projects and tests and school. Uh, and school. And school."

Usually, I'd just laugh at this, but something in his tone makes me stop.

"Well," I say, not really sure what I'm going to follow it with. I fumble for words. "It's almost Christmas break. And at least this is a group project, so I'll help you. Come on, man."

He nods once, then forces a smile.

"Yeah. Thanks, Ky."

"No problem…."

I don't like this. I don't like not being able to help him. I don't like him feeling this way.

I want him to smile.

And then we're at the computer lab. Kenny and Cartman join us as we sit huddled around one screen with me at the keyboard (because even Cartman can't argue that I'm not the fastest typer).

I enter "Bacchanalia" into google and hit the search button. The first few hits are for some restaurant in Atlanta, and after that is—

"Dude, Wikipedia," Kenny says, pointing. "Easy."

"Kenny," I say, patient as I can be, "Wikipedia's not a reliable source of infor—"

"Yeah, yeah." He rolls his eyes. "That's just what the teachers tell you to make it harder. I get all my essays' facts from Wiki."

"When you actually bother to write them," Stan says. "Which is, like, never."

"And when you do," I add, "you get around a C- average."

"I do?" Kenny says, sitting up a bit straighter. "Sweet."

"It's not something to be proud of, Kenny. You're smart; if you just applied yours—"

"Hey, as long as I'm not failing, I'm good."

"Well, you're a failure in Jew-boy's eyes, Kenny," Cartman says, absently spinning a pencil between two fingers.

"No, he's not, you fat fu—"

Kenny interrupts me. "I know, I know, whatever, let's just get this over with. Kinda interested in this whole drunken orgy thing, anyway."

"What about that?" Stan says, with a bored point at a link on the screen.

I eye it. The Bacchanalian Rites of Ancient Rome.

"There you go, Kyle, a 'dot edu,'" Kenny says, punctuating every letter with air quotes. "Better than Wikipedia?"

I huff and click the link. It takes ten seconds to load. God, the computers here are almost as slow as Kenny's.

But then we're in.

The first thing I see is a copy of an old, probably Renaissance, painting of naked women dancing around each other, drinking and eating and….

Kenny whistles, sounding impressed, but I can't keep the blush from creeping up my neck.

I scroll down, only to see more paintings, all further proving Mr. Garrison's description of the ritual as a "drunken orgy," with paragraphs in between them. I try to concentrate on the text.

Honestly, it's fascinating. According to this, the participating revelers would use drugs and wine to send themselves into a trance, a religious fervor, and then let their bestial sides rule, thus bringing themselves closer to the god Bacchus.

I realize we've been silent for a good twenty minutes. Almost unheard-of, for us.

"Damn…," I say. "This sounds—"

"Totally fucking sweet?" Cartman interrupts. "Yeah. Yeah, that's what I was thinking."

I glance at Stan and smile at him. There's more light in his eyes as he stares at the screen.

"More interesting than soap operas?" I ask.

"You kidding?" he says, snorting. "This basically is a soap opera. Drugs, sex, alcohol, wild plot twists….And yet somehow it doesn't make me want to put my foot through the screen."

"Well, that's good," I say. "What do you think, Kenny?"

"Hmm?" he says, glancing away from the computer. "Oh, I didn't read any of it. I was looking at the pretty pictures."

"You mean the boobs," Cartman corrects him.

"That's what I said."

"This report might actually be some fun." I say it mostly for Stan's sake. He looks at me, grins, and nods.

Stan says it first, though we're all thinking it.

"We should do it."

I look up from my book—Livy's History of Rome—and meet his eyes.

We're all at Cartman's house, working on the project. It's almost done. We just need a few more quotes to back us up.

"Do what?" I ask.

"The Bacchanalia, we should do it," he repeats.

"Yeah, that'd be sweet," Cartman says.

Kenny shrugs. "I'm up for it."

I feel like I should be the voice of reason, but a part of me just wants to agree. I shut my book.

"You do realize it's an orgy, right?" I say, looking at each of them, one at a time. "We'd be having an orgy."

"So we invite a few chicks," Kenny says. "Bet Bebe and Red would do it."

"And Wendy," Cartman adds. "Slut would do anything for a chance with me."

"No," Stan says.

"What, you haven't dated her since eighth grade," Cartman says, laughing. "My time to shine."

"Not that." Stan shakes his head. "We can't tell anyone else. It's always been us—us four." He looks at me. "Let's make this our last adventure."

"Gaaaaaaaay," Cartman says, rolling his eyes.

Our last adventure.

With that, I decide. I want to see him smile.

"We don't have to have sex," I say slowly. "We can just try to lose ourselves, you know, just go crazy for one night. The whole fervor thing—see what it feels like."

There's a brief silence.

Kenny grins. "I've got a fake ID. I'll get the wine."

I glance at Stan, and our eyes meet. He smiles. I can feel my pulse in my fingertips. It's fast. Stan's smile is making my heart race, and I feel hot.

Trying to ignore it, I say, "Okay. Let's finish the report first. Then we can plan."

"In summary," I say, clicking to the next slide on our PowerPoint, "the Bacchanalia were not the type of religious rites one might expect to see in modern times. They were based not on moral rectitude and quiet prayer but rather on revelry and pleasure. The Bacchanals honored their god by indulging in his gifts to mankind and reveling in his greatness."

"By drinking, feasting, and fucking," Cartman adds.

"Perhaps," Stan says as I change the slide again, "holy ceremonies of today could benefit from learning of this."

"If they did," Kenny continues, "the world might be a bit less hateful and a bit more fun."

We finish our presentation, and the students start to clap.

"Very nice," Mr. Garrison says as we return to our seats. "Next is Wendy, Token, Clyde, and Butters with Beltane."

I let out a deep breath. Stan catches my eye and smiles at me, and my heart starts punching my ribs again. I smile back but quickly look away.

Shit. This is not good.

"Stan?" I say. I'm lying in bed, staring at the ceiling. "You awake?"

"What's wrong?" He asks from his sleeping bag on the floor.

I stay quiet for a moment, chewing on my thoughts.

"Are we sure about this?" I say at last.

"About what?"

"The Bacchanalia." I pause. "What if something goes wrong? We'll be out of our minds, what if—"

"Kyle." He sounds amused. "Something's definitely going to go wrong. That's what makes it an adventure."

It's not reassuring at all. But somehow it still makes me feel better.

A tiny smile pulls at my lips.

"Okay," I whisper.

"Goodnight, Kyle."

"Goodnight, Stan."