More Than Meets the Ed
The three Ed(d)s had been the best of friends for the longest time, even since Pre-K. They worked together, played together, went to school together, scammed together; did everything together. No one really knew that much about Ed, Edd, and Eddy; no one really to the time to really get to know them.
But they knew about each other. And even though they had tried to keep certain secrets from each other, those secrets eventually came to light.
For the longest time, Eddy had tried to be a hotshot like his brother. But then everyone knew that Eddy's brother turned out to be a big jerk that nobody had any respect for, and they began to be much nicer and more sympathetic to Eddy. But what no one knew, however, that in secret, Eddy was struck with a deep depression that often drove him to tears. Years spent lying and pretending had crashed and burned into nothing, and Eddy no longer knew who he really was inside. The only thing that helped him were his two best friends. Double-D provided an ear to talk to and several intelligent 'remedies' that were more humorous than anything. Ed, who had always had a strong sense of empathy, spoke strangely philosophical words, something he never did in front of anyone else. Eddy was sure that things would have gone downhill in a heartbeat if he didn't have his friends.
Big Ed had been considered and assumed retarded since he was a kid. None of the other kids would play with him until Edd and Eddy. Eddy gave him a purpose in life other than wasting away alone in his room, and Double-D always insisted that he was smarter than others thought and let him do things by himself. He knew that he wouldn't have learned to even dress himself had it not been for Double-D's firm hand. In their last year of middle school, Double-D, who had been suspecting more intelligence from him for the longest time, gave him a few tests that shockingly proclaimed him to be a certified right-brained genius. After that, his brainy friend gave him a custom-made study system to follow by, and his grades skyrocketed. When he became frustrated with things that still made no sense to him, Eddy, who had always been the more laid-back one, would make him take a break and sit down to watch some bad B-horror movie until Ed felt better. Between his two friends, Ed felt like the smartest, most useful person in the world.
Double-D had the biggest secret in the world. Well, secrets. The first one was under his hat. After years of it accidently slipping off and him dodging the subject, Eddy had finally told him to take it off for a few hours and tell him and Ed about it. So he had. Under his hat was a bare scalp and a jagged scar running over the top of his head from ear-to-ear. He told them that there was an accident when he was three years old that literally split his head open. He had almost died. But he lived, with the side-effects of no hair growth on the top of his head and super-enhanced intelligence. He expected pity from his friends, but instead, they lightened the mood by making him play hot-potato with his hat, and the three of them ended up laughing on Ed's bedroom floor with Double-D the ultimate winner. It made Edd happy to have friends who really didn't care about those scars, and just liked him.
And then there was his second, most darkly-kept secret. The third side-effect of the brain injury turned out to be gender confusion. In all physical technicality, Edd was a girl. Around the age of 12, while the other boys' voiced began to change, his stayed the same. At age 13, he started to develop breasts, but he taped them down. Ed and Eddy walked in on him one day, in a frantic, trying to keep the tape in place to no avail, and he started to cry. Ed just hugged him and told him, "Double-D makes a pretty boy". Eddy just blushed, crossed his arms, and said basically the same thing, adding that if Edd just stopped the taping then he wouldn't have to go through that crap. After the fact, they both helped Double-D with the proper taping and made jokes about how Edd might get two 'double-d's' of his own one day.
Their close friendship carried all the way to high school. While the original cul-de-sac gang went their separate ways—Kevin always practicing football, Naz with her cheerleading, Jimmy and Sarah taking over Home Ec., Jonny hanging out with the other weirdoes, and Rolfe dominating the FFA, the Ed(d)s remained together.
Best friends forever.