A/N: I'm only coming out of hiatus to post this/procrastinate on real work. Also, this is kind of a late anniversary piece for me. I wrote about three hundred and fifty thousand words for this site in one year, and about six hundred thousand words total. Have I improved?
Don't know. Whatever. Enjoy the brief oneshot thing.
Kenny McCormick starts playing the guitar in the seventh grade. He's no good, of course, because he's just twelve. But it's still music somehow, chords and hesitant notes, plucked and strummed, humming against the fingerboard.
He plays in the courtyard of South Park Junior High. He even sings a bit, his voice soprano from his childhood opera lessons. The seventh-grade girls swoon, crowding around him, asking him to dedicate a song to them.
He enjoys the attention. He enjoys the feeling of sound being born under his fingers.
Everything is happy.
Until one day, Craig Tucker snatches the guitar from Kenny and smashes it against the pavement.
A Conversation Five Minutes Before the Said Smashing of Guitar:
Senora Pereyo: Buenos, estudiantes. Hablan con companero.
Students (blank stares): What.
Senora Pereyo (sighs): Talk with your partner until class ends.
Kenny turns to the boy in the blue chullo cap sitting next to him. He smiles. Tentatively. Craig scowls back.
Kenny (in perfect Spanish): Man, I so can't wait to get out of here.
Craig (in less than perfect Spanish): Why?
He says it so deadpan Kenny almost thinks he cares.
Kenny: I'm gonna play my guitar during lunch again. The girls love it, right? (insert lewd wink here).
Craig is unimpressed.
Kenny (in English): Hey, you know what? I think I'll be really good at it one day, you know? As long as I keep practicing. Then I'll be a rockstar!
(insert windmilling of arms)
Craig (scowl increasing to harmful levels of cynicism): What. Is that, like, your fucking dream. Or something.
Kenny (smiling): Yeah. Yeah, it is. Not my fault you don't have one. I'm going to be famous one day. I'll get out of this town!
(the bell rings)
Now, back to the shattered chunks of wood all over the pavement.
Craig is panting, his arms shaking from the exertion, his face flushed red. He drops the broken neck of the guitar to the ground.
Kenny is staring.
"You sound so squeaky and scratchy I could hardly think," Craig snaps. "It was getting pretty fucking annoying."
He jams his hands into his pockets and starts to walk away.
Their official fight happens on the school grounds during lunch, Kenny screaming fury and Craig snarling biting remarks. Kenny is on top of the smaller boy, pinning him to the pavement, smashing fists into his cheekbones. His face is red and tears are running down his cheeks. The other children circle around them, cheering. It takes several minutes for a teacher to rip them apart. Kenny in suspended for fighting, and since his parents can't pick him up (too drunk, too high off their asses) he leaves school on his own two feet. Craig watches him go, his hands still in his pockets. Scowling.
The unofficial fight is later that night, just as Craig's digging through his backpack for the key to the house. He hears footsteps on the stone walkway and turns, but it's too late.
Kenny grabs his collar and shoves his back up against the door. He leans in close, enough for Craig to smell the alcohol on his breath.
"Let me the fuck go," Craig hisses.
"Shu' up," Kenny mumbles. "Jus' - jus' shu' up, you, you fucking asshole, Craig."
"I'll scream," Craig says, "if you don't let me go.
Kenny looks at him, his eyes rimmed red, and then drops him. Craig falls into a heap on the ground. He jumps to his feet, still gritting his teeth with anger, but then he manages to get control of him and revert to passive. He sticks his hands into the pockets of his jeans.
"What do you want?"
Kenny steps back. His body is almost a silhouette against the setting sun.
"Jus' - jus' want my guitar. Tha's all I want."
"It's broken."
"You're a fucking asshole, Craig," he repeats, and he focuses on him. They stare at each other.
"At least you got a few bruises in," Craig snaps back. "Hurts like a bitch. Now get out of here."
"Why'd you do it, then?" His fists clench. He steps back, then stands firm.
"I said, you sounded bad."
"No. Tha's not it. You - you're jealous." He laughs. "You're jealous because I had a dream and you don't, because you'll be stuck here forever." His laughter turns to sobs. He cries right there on the bedraggled mess of Craig's front lawn, in the ghetto of South Park if there ever was a ghetto in South Park, and no one is there to care (least of all Craig).
"Apologize," he says.
"I'm not sorry."
"Apologize."
"Fuck off, McCormick."
Kenny looks at him, like he's about to do something violent again, and then he walks away.
A week later, Craig catches Kenny after school, and without offering any explanation, drags him off to the junkyard a few miles out of town.
"Better have a damn good reason for this, Tucker," Kenny snarls.
Craig doesn't say anything. They scramble around a mound of thrown-away things. Kenny stops when he sees the guitars lined up together in a row on the ground.
(for the record, Craig Tucker has never been one for apologizing).
"You do this yourself," Kenny says.
"Been here every day after school." Craig shifts his weight from one foot to the other, and looks away.
Some of them are cracked. Some of them have broken strings. There is something wrong with all of them, to be thrown out like this, but some of them are playable.
Kenny finds two working guitars. He tunes them by ear. He hefts the smaller one and stretches out to hand it to Craig.
Craig pulls one of his hands from his pocket and accepts it by the neck. He sits down and rests his used guitar in his lap. He smiles. Tentatively. Kenny starts to teach him how to play an A chord.