That weekend Kenny had a brilliant time. The bus ride to Denver on Friday was long. He listened to a lot of music on his iPod and watched the scenery go by. Denver had always seemed like a magical place. Tall buildings, people everywhere. It had a distinct feel. It couldn't be anywhere else but Denver. Of course, he hadn't nbeen to many other big cities. New York City, for instance. But he had spent enough time in Denver to know he liked it. He had toured colleges there before high school graduation, before his financial aid fell through and he settled on community college in Pueblo. After graduation, he had gone back with Stan and Kyle for a quick vacation, and that was the second time he'd been downtown. It was always a sheltered time there, anyway. And this time there was hardly any walking involved: walk from check-in through security to his gate at Denver International.
The airport was easy to navigate. Signs told you exactly where to go. The plane ride was a rougher experience, due to its length and the turbulence they met at the end. He fell asleep midway through, and when he woke up they were no longer few in number but covered all the ground below. By the time he reached Newark, the sky was turning pink.
He found the Amtrak station and paid for a ticket. By contrast with the airport, the Amtrak was confusing. They didn't seem to have posted sufficient information about much of anything. If he wanted to go to Princeton Junction, he had to take the train to Trenton, 60 miles south. But they didn't say that. It was fine, anyway, and Kenny ended up on the right train. It was a long train ride. When he got off at Princeton Junction, it was completely dark.
Kenny texted Wendy so she, Stan, and Token could head over to Princeton Station (a different station) to wait for him. From the Junction one takes the Dinky (another NJ Transit train, Kenny guessed lovingly retitled by the Princeton student body) about five minutes to Princeton Station. Kenny had happened to come in on the Dinky operators' dinner break, so he got to take a shuttle down the line to Princeton Station.
Wendy was waiting there. "Kenny!" she cried in greeting, and they hugged. Wendy was thin and small, and Kenny wondered if he'd grown. She fit snugly in his arms. Wendy always sounded genuinely happy to see him, and they broke apart he saw her happiness in her eyes. "Let me carry that for you," she said, reaching for Kenny's bag.
"No, please, I've got it," Kenny said, although his body was tired.
"Are you sure?" Wendy asked. "Stan and Token are over here on the other side of the station. I guess they didn't know the Dinky wasn't running." Kenny didn't know how they'd gotten separated in the first place. Maybe they weren't sure, and they said they would wait there and sent Wendy over to the bus stop. He followed Wendy across the platform, through the crowd that had left the shuttle.
"There they are," Wendy said, and Kenny saw Stan and Token sitting together on a bench by the tracks, talking quietly.
Kenny called out to them, and they turned their heads, grinning. "Hey," Token and Stan said together, also sounding happy. Kenny hugged Token first. If Kenny had grown it was nothing compared to Token, who had been working out more now that he'd started wrestling. Then he hugged Stan, who was as small as ever, but not quite as thin as Kenny. Stan was visiting from Colorado College and had been there since Wednesday. He was staying in Token's quad suite. "How's it going?" they all asked each other. Kenny saw Token had a big scab on the bridge of his nose, presumably from wrestling.
Even though it was almost nine, the three of them had agreed to wait for Kenny to eat dinner. Token and Wendy guided them first to Frist, the student center. The cafe there was very nice. There was sushi under the bar, and old political cartoons framed on the walls.
"This is where all the policy wonks hang out," Token explained when Kenny eyed the pictures.
"Policy wonks?" Kenny asked. They had moved over to the cash register, where Wendy was paying for Stan's pizza.
"That's what one of the professors here calls them," Token laughed. "You want me to buy your pizza?"
"No, I got it," Kenny said.
"Please?" Token said, giving Kenny a charming smile.
"No, thanks," Kenny said.
After paying, they took a seat at the table and talked openly without having to break the ice.
"I've come to love Britney Spears now," Token said at one point.
"Are you kidding me, Token?" Stan huffed. Wendy laughed.
"Especially Blackout," Token continued. "It's just so ebullient. I was afraid to play it at first, because her personal life seems so scary. But no, it's great. A lot of people are missing out because they dismiss her instantly, without listening to her music."
"I feel that way about Lil Wayne," Kenny said.
"Oh my god, you like Lil Wayne?" Wendy asked incredulously, laughing. "Kenny, what's happened to you?"
Kenny felt compelled to defend Lil Wayne, but he didn't really know why. He felt kind of stupid.
After a while of talking, a silence came over them. Kenny asked, "So what now?"
"Well, there's an improv show at 10 I want to go to," Stan said. "My roommate at CC, Isaac, you met him, he has a childhood friend who's in the group, and it's supposed to be pretty funny. I kind of want to go there to support Isaac."
"Support Isaac? He's not even in it!" Kenny said, jokingly.
"No, he's here, though," Stan said. "He's staying with him. His name's Dylan, and Dylan's in the improv group, and I said I'd go for him."
"It is a funny improv group," Wendy said. "I think they're called Fuzzy Dice."
"Okay, sounds good," Kenny said. "But let's wait for Kyle to go up. Where is Kyle?"
"Oh, he's doing training for his China program," Wendy told him. "That's a good idea, though, we should wait for him. Only I don't know when he'll come. Token, have you texted him?"
Token pulled out his phone.
People were painting t-shirts on the Frist lower level, just outside the cafe, at small round tables. It was pre-frosh weekend, so everything was dog and pony. While they waited for Kyle they finger-painted a t-shirt between those thick stone walls and under the high ceiling. There were many colors. Laughing, Token generously called their paintings abstract. But it ended up being a really cool shirt, which they didn't realize until they saw a picture they got a pre-frosh girl to take of them posing with it. There was a purple eye looking off to the side, surrounded by brown squiggly lines and orange smiley faces and other weird things. Kyle didn't show. Moseying on upstairs to the improv show, they left the t-shirt to dry, to pick it up later, but had forgotten about it within a few minutes. It became one of many abandoned t-shirts floating around Frist during pre-frosh weekend.
There was a Starcraft tournament going on in one room by a library. All Asians. Kenny, Wendy, Stan, and Token walked on, turned a corner, and reached the end of the hall, where a banner said, "Fuzzy Dice improv!" A small line waited outside a door to an auditorium. While waiting, Kenny looked around him at the old-looking hallway and read signs tacked up on a noteboard, and Token talked to Wendy about a class she was in. The two of them didn't meet often unless they had visitors. Finally, at the front of the line, they were told they needed tickets to get in. A blond girl in a Fuzzy Dice shirt said, "None of you is a pre-frosh, are you? I'm sorry. It's really a pre-frosh thing; everybody else has to pay. But if you come back in about five minutes and there's still space in the auditorium, then I can let you in."
So the four of them turned around and walked back to Starcraft, against the tide of people heading to the improv show. "You're not Asians," one of the contestants said, surprised, when they walked in. Wendy watched the action, projected on a white board, with a look somewhere between pity and amusement on her face. Finally Kenny tapped her shoulder, and they headed back to the improv show. By now the line of ticketed people had already gone in, and the blond girl, smiling at them, now said, "Go on in."
Isaac waved at them from two rows from the back. He and Kenny said "How's it going?" to each other and talked until the lights went down. But the show didn't end up being all that funny. The actors (one of whom was the girl who had let them in a minute ago) seemed to pick up steam during the third game, right after which Token, Stan, Wendy, and Kenny left. They had gotten to see Dylan introduce the second game, but he hadn't participated in any they'd seen. On the way out, a couple of Princeton students passed them. One was telling the other that Princeton had another, better improv troupe. Kenny remembered Cartman's run in University of Denver's unofficial improv group, and thought that would've kicked any show's butt.
Kenny walked slightly ahead of the group through the hall. He wasn't hearing what the others were talking about. He had a feeling they would run into Kyle in the hall, and Kenny would nonchalantly say, "Hey Kyle." And oddly, as soon as the four of them turned the corner, there was Kyle, walking toward them. Kenny nonchalantly said, "Hey Kyle," and they hugged.
"How's it going?" Kenny asked.
"Great," Kyle said, as the group unconsciously formed into a semi-circle around him. "I'm so excited right. There's a drag show tomorrow night at Terrace, I was just hearing about it. I'd love for you all to come."
"Terrace?" Stan asked.
"Ooh, that's Kyle's eating club," Wendy said.
"Eating club?" Kenny asked.
"It's a fraternity, basically," Token said.
As Kyle enthused about the drag show, Kenny found himself paying less and less attention. The conversation blurred, like objects had blurred more in high school as his vision had gotten worse, before his parents had sprung for contacts.
He heard Stan say, "Let's go outside," and Kyle agree, and then they were walking downstairs. Even the stairs looked like something out of a castle somewhere. They passed the cafe and walked out into the night. Outside of Frist they lay on the grass for a bit. Many multi-colored bikes were locked up in front of the student center. Bugs were buzzing around the lights in front of the building. The walking path was crowded with people heading to different activities. Nobody seemed to be alone, least of all the bugs. Kyle talked enthusiastically with Stan about the stars overhead and an astronomy class he was likely to take next semester. Token and Wendy talked quietly about academics. Token didn't seem very responsive; he too was looking up at the stars. Kenny felt Wendy lean toward him and heard her say, "Are you very tired, Kenny?"
"Yeah," Kenny said.
"Okay, I think Kenny and I are going back to my room," she said to the group. She and Token briefly wondered whether she would have enough blankets, but she decided it was probably okay.
They all hugged, and Kenny held Kyle especially tight. "I'm happy to be here," he said.
"I'm happy to have you," Kyle said, sounding wholeheartedly happy.
Kenny walked slowly with Wendy to her dorm. She began to explain why she didn't see Token and Kyle much, but seemed to decide to say something else instead. "Other than you," she said, "a lot of my old friends and I are hanging out in one-on-one situations for the first time, and I notice they're quite different there than in group settings."
"What do you mean?" Kenny asked.
"Sometimes it just feels awkward. Like, we usually end up talking about people from South Park High. It seems like just a deflection."
"Or a resort," Kenny said. "I guess people don't like to feel awkward."
"Yeah," Wendy said.
"You know, I feel that way about Kyle," Kenny said. "And to a lesser extent Token. Kyle's interests just seem like disguises. Like, he gets so excited about things, but I can never figure out why, and they always seem to conveniently distract from the deeper things that I'd like to talk to him about."
"Like what?"
"Well... I don't really know."
"And Token..."
"Token mostly keeps to himself. He just doesn't seem to reveal much about himself. I wonder how much he really knows."
"Hm," Wendy said.
Wendy had a lovely dorm in Whitman College. She set things up nicely for Kenny, with a sleeping pad and bag. In her single room she had a theremin and an electric piano. Tacked on the wall was a piece of paper with writing on it: "If bored: 1) Study 2) Practice piano 3) Read 4) Take a walk." A wide windowsill was home to several library Kerouac copies.
"I've gotten into him," she explained.
"I remember you doing that in high school," Kenny said. "You pick one out at a time, right, and read a ton?"
"Yeah, I did it back then with Murakami."
"And you read all his books."
"Yes. And I did the same for a couple other authors after I got here. I did it for Hemingway, who was, eh, just okay. And I did it with probably now my favorite author, Alexander McCall Smith."
"What did he write?" Kenny asked.
Wendy rattled off the names of some books Kenny had never heard of.
"Anyway," she said, "with Kerouac I started with Dharma Bums, and now I've got quite a few checked out. I don't know if I'll have time to read them, though."
"Why?" Kenny asked.
"Oh, just a lot of work," she said.
Kenny sometimes talked to Cartman on the phone, more often to him than anyone else, and he always said the same thing, that he was super busy. But Kenny always found himself with hardly anything to do. Admittedly, he blew off a lot of his homework, something he wasn't proud of. Sometimes he didn't really feel sure why he was in community college.
"What's your favorite Kerouac book?" he asked.
"Probably Dharma Bums, the one I started with." Kenny examined the cover and found he liked the colors, sort of teal and black. "Oh, and Visions of Gerard," Wendy continued. "It's sort of about his brother, who died when they were very young. It's sort of a portrayal of him as a saint, or a saint-like figure. I just like it because it seems more tender than most of Kerouac's writing."
Kenny pulled Visions of Gerard off the windowsill, and when they lay down to read a bit before bed, he opened it. It was more confusing than anything, but some of the descriptions were pretty. Meanwhile, Wendy read the newspaper, looking tired. Kenny thought that Wendy must have a good life. Living in that lovely dorm; checking books out of the library, reading them, exploring on her own time; learning Chopin; trying to learn the theremin. She was so studious, always had been. But she had never been so intense about it, and as focused on spending her time productively, as Kyle had been. Kyle loved to keep himself busy. Sometimes he seemed frantic to keep himself busy. And the more Kenny got to know him, the more the same seemed true of Token.
After asking Kenny if it was okay, Wendy folded up the newspaper, put it on the windowsill, and turned out the light. Kenny lay on his back, and listened while Wendy's breathing steadied. She was asleep. Kenny didn't know what he was lying awake for, but he felt a bit of sadness in his heart for Kyle. He always felt a bit of sadness for Kyle. That was the feeling that had characterized the past two years, since his and Kyle's brief fling, and before that there had been a bit of sadness for anything. But Kenny wasn't going to let that bit of sadness, which had followed him so closely over the years, hang over this trip. The last time he had seen Kyle and Wendy, in South Park, it had been the highlight of his year. So he was excited for the next day, and he meant to enjoy it to the absolute fullest-a resolution he had seldom if ever made before. That thought made Kenny feel good, and before long he fell asleep too, in his typical position. Arms folded lightly over his stomach, he looked like someone in a coffin, waiting to be buried or awaken.