Chapter One
"I don't know, Wendy, this left tit is definitely a cup size bigger than my right," Bebe said, cupping her boob like the head of an infant in her hand, before dropping it and letting it bounce like a vat of lard, "This nipple is like nickel sized and the other one is quarter size. Go get my wallet so I can check."
Wendy looked up from their science project on the floor, giving her a look. "I don't know why we always have to have this conversation. You take your top off every time you come over, and I have never noticed the asymmetrical properties of your breasts." The squeak of her marker against the poster board filled the silence as Bebe turned to look her best friend dead in the eye, hands squeezing her boobs tight together so both of her nipples looked like peas in a pod.
"Wendy." Her voice was low. "A blind man could see how lopsided they are. A dolphin could hear how lopsided they are with echolocation. And more importantly, a cute boy is going to feel how lopsided they are. This is a tragedy, okay? My endowments are a Dr. Seuss book. It's little boob, big boob, soft boob, firm boob all over these babies."
"Bebe, I feel like this is a discussion you should be having with your doctor, or maybe your mom, instead of me." Wendy capped her Mr. Sketch chocolate scented marker, whipping out a cherry one to finish drawing in the hydrogen atoms. "And I'm pretty sure that if a boy were to feel them, they would be thinking about much more than how even your chest is."
Sighing, the blonde fished her bra out to wear like an oversized bracelet on her wrist from underneath a pink throw pillow. "Are you sure? 'Cause at that lame party we went to last week, Craig accidentally brushed against them with his back and I'm pretty sure he noticed. It was this crazy look in his eye, that's how I could tell."
Wendy didn't answer, and instead turned to her chemistry textbook to research the properties of hydrogen. And so Bebe stood, her chest bared to the world, and made a solemn decision.
"Wendy, you need to ask Stan for me."
She stared at her topless friend and her mouth fell open. "I'm not showing my boyfriend your boobs, Bebe. I can't believe you would ask me to do something like that." She shook her head, turning back to their science project, currently worth fifty percent of their semester grade.
"Fine," Bebe groaned, "I'll just text a picture of my boobs to the guys and ask one of them."
Wendy calmed herself down with a single collective breath and capped her marker. "Please don't. Jesus fucking Christ, Bebe, do you want your supposedly uneven breasts plastered across the social mediaverse of South Park?"
She paused thoughtfully, rubbing her chin. "Well. If they're not lopsided like you're telling me, then I'll get like twenty more likes on my Instagram pics. It'll work out in my favor in the end." When she shrugged, her boobs jiggled.
Wendy lifted herself up from laying belly-down on the floor, brushing off her lavender sweater. "I am telling you this as your best friend. You cannot send out a picture of your naked, underage body to a bunch of pubescent boys. You could get suspended from school. Bebe, you could even get arrested for child pornography."
She rolled her eyes before resuming her favorite spot in front of Wendy's sticker plastered mirror. "Should it be a mirror selfie or will I look like white trash?"
Wendy pinched the bridge of her nose and groaned. "You're already wearing a pair of Victoria's Secret leopard print yoga pants that say 'wild' on the ass."
Bebe grinned. "Good point. There's no saving me. I've gone off the deep end in regards to looking like a slut, haven't I?" She pulled her phone out of the back of her thong and jutted her hip out, throwing her frizzy hair over her shoulder. "They just look like sad, soggy pears. Remember when I had the nicest tits in school?"
Wendy referred to her open textbook, looking back and forth from her iMessage conversation with Kyle to the section on atomic mass. "They're just saggy because they're big."
She worked a few angles as she took her pictures. "Yeah, but it's only because I'm so fat. I'm lucky all my weight is in my ass and my boobs." Cupping one of her butt cheeks, she puckered her lips and leaned forward for the camera.
Her friend rolled her eyes. Their project wasn't even half way done and it was already nine at night. Tomorrow, Wendy was going on a two day field trip with her science club and wouldn't be able to do their project over the weekend. She'd never let Bebe touch such a big grade with a ten foot pole. Wendy wished Bebe would at least attempt to help with the project so they could finish before midnight.
Bebe scrolled through her contacts, pausing every time she found a potential prospector for her nudes. "Maybe I should just send it to Kyle. He'd tell me if they were lopsided. Isn't it against the whole Jew code to lie?" She was too absorbed in her hasty, emoji overflowing explanation to the eldest Broflovksi son to notice that Wendy had instantly stiffened at the sound of his name.
"Oh. Okay. Go ahead. I don't care. Just, uh, let me know what he says." She tried to keep the anxiety out of her voice but Bebe knew her too well.
She threw on her hot pink bra, complete with zebra stripe ribbons, and posed like a pinup on Wendy's bedspread. "I doubt he'll even answer. He's so uninterested in girls I wonder if he's okay in the head." She started tapping away on her phone as Wendy quickly answered a text from the topic of conversation and pretended like she didn't.
The dark haired girl gave an uncertain shrug. "I don't know…I think he's okay in the head." She rolled her scented markers across the poster board, her hands suddenly sweaty. "Maybe he's just a little too focused on school to worry about annoying high school girls."
Bebe raised her eyebrows. "Really now? And are those his words or your words there?" She was all too quickly amused watching Wendy attempt to thinly veil her ruse.
"I don't know what you're talking about. Kyle and I are just friends."
"Well, I didn't say you were any more than that." Bebe crossed her arms over her chest and shook her head in disbelief. A mischievous smile was playing at her lips. "You've got a crush on Kyle, you minky little slut!"
The blood normally coursing healthily throughout Wendy's brain flooded her face. "No I don't! Shut up, Bebe! I'm dating Stan. I like Stan. I love Stan, a lot!" Even as she said the words, they sounded pathetic, as if she were trying to convince herself and not Bebe.
Thankfully, her best friend could've cared less about crushes on Jewish boys. The blonde rolled her eyes and turned back to her phone. The meek text, 'hey kyle r my boobs lopsided? lol let me know asap haha,' punctuated with tearful laughing emojis, looked a bit pathetic. Bebe stared at the image of her half-naked body posed in front of Wendy's mirror, its owner laying on the floor surrounded in the nuclear fallout of their science project. She blinked a few times, thumb hovering over the blue 'send' button. Maybe Wendy was right. Should she risk being expelled from school just because she was insecure about her body?
She remembered hearing from a guest speaker at school that when you're old and decrepit, you regret the things you didn't do rather than the things you did. The guest speaker may have been talking about things like auditioning for a school play or going to a job interview, though. Worst case scenario, Bebe thought, was Kyle telling her she did indeed have one boob saggier than the other. Best case scenario they were perfectly even and she maybe even got a dick pic out of their conversation. Gathering up her courage into a little ball in her stomach, she took a quick breath, sent the text, and as an afterthought asked God for forgiveness.
"I sent it." Her voice wasn't as solid as she wanted it to sound.
Wendy didn't even glance up. Her eyes were bored into the screen of her own cell phone, clenched in her milk-white fingers. Would Kyle tell Wendy that her best friend had just sent him a nude? Who would he answer first? Her fuzzy socks tapped at her carpet anxiously. Bebe's acrylic nails rapped along the surface of Wendy's nightstand. In the pits of both of their stomachs, anxiety began to eat away at the Oreos they had shared before they started on their chemistry project. Together, they waited on Kyle.
Bebe's phone was the first to 'ding' with a response. Wendy's heart fell.
"Ugh, it's not even Kyle." Bebe rolled her eyes, opening the text. "Clyde's trying to booty call me again."
The dark haired girl on the floor tried to swallow the growing lump in her throat. "He's such a douchebag," seemed like the appropriate, supportive thing to say to a best friend dealing with a sleazy ex.
"Can you believe he's trying to get with me now? When we were dating he couldn't even keep it up long enough to take my virginity. Like anything is going to change now that we're broken up."
This came as news to Wendy. "Wait, I thought you and Clyde did have sex. Didn't you? On homecoming night?"
Bebe gave a tight sigh. "I wanted to. First, we tried in his dad's ugly little Camry and then he couldn't get a boner. I was giving him a handjob for twenty minutes and it was like handling a soggy hot dog bun. So gross." Bebe was still sending a snarky reply to Clyde. "So we went back to his house. His parents were gone for the weekend so he lit all these candles in his parents' bedroom, right? So I'm laying on the bed, killing it in my homecoming dress, and he comes in from the bathroom. Then we were making out, and I'm actually kind of turned on at this point, if you can believe it. But then – get this – he tried to go down on me, and he could not figure out how to do it. It felt like a microwaved slug trying to weasel into my vag. So I'm like, 'look, honey, let's switch. I'll go down on you.' And this guy still could not keep a stiffy long enough to stick it in me once. Needless to say that's why I dumped him three weeks later. What's the good in having a boyfriend who doesn't even find you hot enough to get a boner?"
Wendy paused. "Didn't he dump you because he caught you kissing Token under the bleachers?"
The blonde tightened her jaw. "It was a mutual break up. It doesn't matter."
They sat in silence once more, Wendy seriously pondering her life choices. If Bebe the school slut hadn't lost her virginity and she had, what did that make her? Even she'd handed over her v-card shortly after turning seventeen. Granted, it lasted two and a half minutes and it happened in the bed of Stan's truck in the middle of the woods, but it still happened. Feeling significantly dirtier and more shameful than she had five minutes ago, Wendy kept on at their science project.
Bebe's phone dinged again. Hesitantly, she peeked at her phone screen, hoping it wasn't another booty call. Her jaw dropped in surprise. "It's Kyle! He answered!"
Her hands were shaking so hard she mistyped her passcode. Why was she even freaking out so much? It was one nude. She didn't even think Kyle was cute. It didn't matter what Kyle thought about her nudes. Bebe held out her hands in front of herself, watching them until they steadied. Once more, she tried to put in her passcode. She ground her teeth when she got in wrong again.
"Fuck this stupid phone!" Bebe shouted, smashing in another incorrect passcode.
Wendy was wringing her hands. Why hadn't Kyle texted her yet? Shouldn't he have sent her some kind of text like, 'hey, your best friend sent me a nude,' or something like that? She clenched her fists and felt the bite of her fingernails digging into her palms. The last text he sent was asking about their stupid field trip that weekend. All he had to do was send one pathetic text! She could feel fury starting to boil in her abdomen.
Bebe was telling herself to calm down in her mind to no avail. Oh my God, she thought, please just fucking stop. Just stop. Calm down. You have no reason to panic. Your heart is going a mile a minute. Why does this feel like that one horrible acid trip? Why was she panicking so much? All she had to do was put in her passcode, four easy numbers – one, three, six, nine. It was so basic. How could she still be messing up? She pressed the one. She pressed the three. She pressed the six. She pressed the – Wendy jumped up, forcing Bebe to press the wrong number.
"Damn it, Wendy! You made me lock myself out of my phone for five minutes!"
Her face was pink. "Kyle texted me." Wendy's heart was aflutter in her chest.
Bebe stared at her with expectant, wide eyes. "And?"
"And what?"
The blonde groaned and punched one of Wendy's panda shaped pillows. "And what does it say, you dumb bitch?"
"Oh," Wendy mumbled, holding her phone too close to her face. "He asked if I was with you. He said, 'hey, this is kind of random but are you with Bebe right now?'"
Why did it matter? "You're in the background of the picture I sent him. Maybe that's why he's asking."
Wendy turned scarlet. "I'm in it? I'm in your child pornography?" She stamped her fuzzy sock into the fuchsia carpet. "Bebe, that's so messed up!"
"Please," Bebe waved her away, rolling her eyes again, "Even if you weren't in it anyone could tell this is your room. It can't be mine, I mean look. There are books and frumpy clothes everywhere."
A low, frustrated growl sounded from the back of Wendy's throat. "Bebe. That makes me an accessory to your crime. I can't plead ignorance. Anyone could tell I knew you were right in front of me taking pictures of yourself!"
Bebe couldn't help herself. She let out a laugh. "Crime? It's one nude! Kyle isn't going to send it to anyone. He's too nice and good-guy-ish and boring." She met eyes with Wendy, looking suspiciously like a scheming cat. "In other words, he's perfect for you."
"How many times have I told you that I'm with Stan? He is my boyfriend, I like him as my boyfriend. And I definitely don't want to lose him as my boyfriend." She was starting to feel like a broken record.
"You can have a crush on Kyle and be with Stan at the same time, you know. Hell, you could even do some kinky shit with Kyle and still have your little football team captain boyfriend if you wanted. But I know you don't have it in you."
Wendy scoffed in disbelief. "I would never do 'kinky shit' with Kyle. I have a sound moral compass and wouldn't cheat on my boyfriend." She crossed her arms over her grandma-esque sweater, narrowing her soft brown eyes at her best friend, who was lying like an underwear model on her bedspread. "I'm not like you."
Bebe knocked back her head of rickrack curls, cackling. "You're hilarious, acting like I don't already know I'm a slut." She shook her head, smile still wide, glancing at her phone screen once more. Three minutes until her phone could be unlocked.
"You're a slut? Please! You haven't even ever had sex with a boy!" Wendy's face was slowly turning purple. "At least I could give Stan a – a boner!"
"Stan got a boner from seeing my thong through my leggings last week."
She felt a little guilty saying it out loud. Bebe could tell her insults were going from jabs between friends to low blows below the belt. She'd only meant to make Wendy uncomfortable by poking fun at her crush on Kyle, not create a chasm in their friendship. The boner comment struck a chord with Wendy. Her face was starting to twist like she'd just smelled a particularly raunchy fart.
She was struggling for words. "Yeah – well – you – I bet the reason Clyde couldn't keep it up was because of your nasty muffin top and your saggy, uneven tits!"
Bebe sat up on Wendy's bed, with a mixed look of amusement and disbelief on her face. "So it finally comes out. My boobs are lopsided." She shrugged, grabbing her bedazzled crop top and tugging it over her head. She hunted down her socks and shoes, pulling them on. "Guess it's good to know that I've also got a…what did you call it? 'Nasty muffin top?'"
Wendy could only helplessly watch Bebe gathering up her things. "Bebe, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that." Her heart, instead of racing, was now starting to weigh like a great stone in her chest.
The blonde gave a tight smile with her over-glossed lips. "Well you did. So there's that." She zipped up her coat, taking a good look at the poster board on the floor. "I want my markers back before I leave."
Guiltily, Wendy dropped to her knees and started to scoop up the scented markers. She knew that Bebe was only trying to add insult to injury, but it was still embarrassing all the same. She felt like she was almost groveling at Bebe's feet. Maybe that's what Bebe wanted. Once each one had been put back in its box, Wendy held them out to Bebe. She grabbed them a bit too quickly.
"Good job on the science project, but hydrogen bonds are formed with polar covalent bonds, not nonpolar."
Wendy glanced at the project and saw the mistake repeated at least six times throughout the entire project. Getting into an argument with a petty, spiteful bitch was the worst. "I'll fix it," Wendy blurted, already reaching into her desk drawer for her whiteout.
Bebe grabbed her fluorescent backpack from the floor, the word 'PINK' written across the front with silver sequins. Leave it to Bebe Stevens to own just about anything Victoria's Secret sold. She gave her best friend – if they even were anymore – a good, long glare before turning on her heel. On her way out of the door, she called, "Have fun on your field trip. See you at school."
Wendy watched her mane of frizzy yellow hair disappear from her doorframe. Slowly, she lowered herself onto her mattress, watching through her window as Bebe threw her backpack into her red Volkswagen Beetle. It took two tries for Bebe's engine to start. Once it did, her tires screeched as she sped off into the Colorado night.
Feeling miserable and coming off the adrenaline high she'd received from yelling, Wendy picked up her phone and opened up the text from Kyle she'd forgotten to answer.
'She just left,' she responded, falling into her mountain of pink and purple pillows. For extra comfort, she picked up her panda pillow, hugging it close to her stomach.
Kyle's next response was quick. 'I was only asking because she sent Kenny a naked picture of herself but put my name in the message. Was it meant for me?'
Wendy gasped so hard she choked on her spit. It was just as she had feared. Bebe had sent a nude to the one boy in South Park with an infamous spank bank he shared with the boys at school. Everyone at South Park High School was going to see those pictures. In a hurry, Wendy called Kyle. He picked up on the first ring.
She didn't bother to say hello. "Did she really send it to Kenny instead of you?"
"Yeah. I'm with him and Stan at a party right now." The music in the background was dim enough for her to know that Kyle had stepped outside to take the call.
Wendy chewed her fingernails. "Did he put it in The Archive?"
The Archive was Kenny's fabled spank bank of legend. Every nude from every girl who had ever sent one in South Park was packed into a secret folder on Google Drive. Any person with the password, which supposedly changed every other week, was able to gain access to a myriad of naked selfies, screenshotted Snapchats of underage boobs in skimpy bras, and even the occasional picture of the girls' locker room taken by a spy. The mere possibility that Bebe might even be in The Archive was making Wendy's skin crawl.
"I don't know if he did. He's in the bathroom right now but he took his phone with him. He could be putting it in there right now."
She made a nervous sound, standing up from her bed to pace her room. "I can't believe this. I told her she shouldn't have sent it and she did anyway."
Kyle cleared his throat on the other line. "So…why did she send me a picture of herself like that in the first place?"
"She's always been obsessed with whether or not her boobs are lopsided. I tried to tell her that they aren't because I don't think it matters anyway, but she was really worried about it tonight and decided to ask you because she knew you couldn't lie about it since you're Jewish."
She could hear his breath on the other line. Somehow, it seemed to comfort her, just a little bit. "That doesn't even make sense. Are guys supposed to care if boobs are lopsided?"
"Exactly! They aren't!" Wendy couldn't help but smile. "I knew you would get it. But now this picture is going to end up God knows where just because she was feeling self-conscious."
"I'll see if I can talk Kenny out of putting it in The Archive. Sound good?"
Now a bit more relaxed, Wendy fell into her desk chair. "Thank you so much. I've got to call Bebe, but text me or FaceTime me or whatever when you've talked to Kenny, all right?"
"I will. See you tomorrow on the bus to Denver."
Wendy smiled. "See you tomorrow. Bye."
"Bye."
He hung up. Wendy sat in her desk chair for a moment, holding her phone to her chest. Everything that Bebe had said to get under her skin about her crush on Kyle came flooding back. Angrily, she shook her head, snapping out of her lovesick little girl trance. Now was not the time to sigh dreamily and stare off into space. Wendy had a best friend to rescue.
Back at the Stevens residence, Bebe came up the stairs, throwing her backpack on the landing and depositing her Converse on the way to her room. With an irritated grunt, she fell onto her bed, pulling her phone from her pocket. How weird. She had a text from Kenny and Kyle. She unzipped her winter coat with one hand, the other properly putting in her passcode. In a moment of insecurity, she decided to read Kenny's first. She was too nervous to see what Kyle had said about her picture. Four words from Kenny McCormick made her lungs stop and her heart still. 'This isn't Kyle lol.'
Right away, her phone went off. It was Wendy. Bebe answered, her throat starting to close and her eyes burning with hot tears.
"I'm going to be an Archive girl," Bebe choked. "I didn't want to be that big of a slut!"
"I heard everything from Kyle. Did you know you were sending it to Kenny?"
Bebe grabbed a fistful of her kinky hair. "No! Their names are right next to each other in my phone, I must have hit Kenny instead!" Her sobs were close together, high pitched, and frantic.
Wendy was going into best friend therapy mode. "All right, I want you to calm down. Take some deep breaths."
The blonde began to slow her breathing, fat tears wobbling down her cheeks. When she spoke, she sounded like a blubbering baby. "Okay."
"I talked to Kyle already. He said he's going to talk to Kenny about keeping it out of The Archive. Until then, don't talk to anyone. Don't tell any of our friends that you sent a nude. If you do, then someone might ask Kenny for it and we don't want it leaking anywhere. Got it?"
Bebe nodded even though she knew Wendy couldn't see her. "Got it."
Wendy sighed. "I'm sorry I said that stuff. And I'm sorry this is happening to you. For now, what you need to do is drink a glass of water, get ready for bed, and go to sleep. I'll text you in the morning and give you a status report. Sound good?"
Bebe sniffed and gave a little sob. "Yeah. I forgive you. But it's still fucked up that you said I had a nasty muffin top."
"It's only in that one pair of low-rise hip huggers with the hearts on the pockets. Those make it so bad," Wendy laughed.
"Fair enough. I'll get ready for bed." Bebe could feel a watery grin surfacing from her fit of crying.
"Okay. Good night, Bebe."
"'Night, Wendy."
Bebe wasn't as dumb as she made herself out to be. She knew that almost every piece of advice Wendy offered was both sound and sane. But as she stood, staring at the miserable image of her crying face in her vanity mirror, Bebe had a realization.
She didn't give a fuck what Wendy had to say about the situation.
The blonde stood up, ripped her crop top and yoga pants off, and marched to her closet. She yanked her best dress from its hanger – a little black number with a low neckline that worked wonders on her cleavage – and stepped into her favorite pair of patent leather red heels that she'd stolen from a Halloween store. She stuffed her red handbag full of Trojans and sat in front of her vanity to cover up the aftereffects of her breakdown.
A generous amount of concealer, eyeliner, and mascara later, Bebe was ready to conquer the world. Or at least just her very small corner of it. She picked up her cellphone, smirk tugging at her painted lips.
"Hey, Clyde. Did you say there was a party at your place tonight? Good. Make sure there's an empty room for us when I get there, all right?" She scooped up her keys and tossed her handbag over her shoulder. "Can't wait."
If people were going to talk about the newest Archive girl, Bebe Stevens was going to give them something to talk about.