This is my escape. Come away with me.

South Park: Not mine

To Caturday. Without you, I'd have nothing to write about.

Kenny gets a hard knot in his stomach every time someone mentions college. Not because he is really worried about getting into one. He knows he won't; it isn't even a question. He has no money, no connections, and a report card that can be sung out-loud like Beethoven's 5th symphony (Duh-duh-duh duuuhhh!). He doesn't even apply—there's just no point. If he gets in, he won't be able to afford it. But he won't get in, so he doesn't bother.

However, when the season of acceptance letters begins, Kenny grows increasingly apprehensive. Maybe it is because he fears being left behind. Everyone else seems to have big dreams and places to go. Kenny's dreams don't reach past his front door. This is a clever trick, a survival method. This way, Kenny is never disappointed.

It's just…he never felt trapped in South Park until everyone else started talking about leaving it.

He can usually ignore the tight fist in his abdomen when people talk about fancy universities on the east coast, or private colleges with special programs and thousand dollar scholarships. Kenny grits his teeth through and can at least pretend it doesn't bother him. He's used to things he can't have.

But the knot gets much, much heavier and colder, an icy ball of pure desperation aching in his gut when Wendy starts talking about MIT. It's some engineering school in Massachusetts, and when she says it out loud, she smiles all nervously. She sent her application in two months ago, and it's been in her eyes ever since.

And more than anything, Kenny hopes she doesn't get in. It probably makes him a terrible person, but he doesn't care. He's been poor for long enough that he knows how to hold onto good things. But he doesn't know how to hold onto her, and it scares the hell out of him.

See, Kenny never meant to let Wendy become so important to him. She fell into his life without warning or reason, and he didn't even have the strength to try to resist. The simple truth is that Kenny never had anything to lose until Wendy.

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It wasn't like Kenny was some kind of poet. But there was poetry to him all the same, a sensibility about the world he possessed that made him captivating. It was the reason he never had trouble finding company at night—girls, in particular, seemed to sense the raw energy he possessed and were drawn to him, hypnotized by the air of mystery and his enigmatic charm. Kenny knew this, or at least, he knew they were compelled by a mysterious force to let him put his hands all over them, all in hopes that they'd catch a glimpse of the elusive something that made Kenny different.

He had the gentle intensity of a feral creature, and Wendy would say it was always a bit disarming to meet his startled, wild-bright eyes. Sometimes after school, she'd watch him chain-smoking under the bleachers, his filthy day-glow orange parka striped with black shadows from the metal seats above. There was a peculiar beauty and grace in the lines of his posture as he slunk behind the slanted silhouettes.

For months, Kenny watched Wendy pretend to ignore him. He watched her watching him, safe behind his shadows.

But one day, during the winter of their junior year in high school, Eric had glued Wendy's shoes together…again. This time, it had set Wendy enough behind schedule that she'd missed the bus.

So had Kenny.

And Wendy hadn't had to walk the whole way to school in the snow without shoes, because Kenny had carried her.

She'd admit later that it was most romantic thing anyone had ever done for her. It was Kenny who made her believe love made princes out of paupers.

They'd gone to the Valentine's Day dance together, Wendy in tender silk, and Kenny in an un-tucked white dress shirt and jeans. He remembers that night, because the first time he kissed her, Wendy's eyes were like stars.

Sometimes, he'd take off his hood in the middle of the hallway to rest his forehead against hers, cradling her face in his big, rough hands as he did so. When they walked together, she'd loop her arm through his, and he'd clutch her hand close to his heart.

He walked with her to every class. Each time, when they'd reach the classroom and part ways, he'd reluctantly release her fingers as she slipped through the doors. As he stood, empty hand outstretched for a few moments after she disappeared, it struck a few passerbys as sad to see him standing alone, savoring their last moments of touch.

It was the college acceptance letters that changed things. The day Wendy had come to school with a big envelope from MIT that began with "Congratulations," she'd taken the bus.

And she'd taken a seat next to Kyle Broflovski, who'd held a matching envelope in his hand, and in front of Stan, who would hear that night he'd gotten into Regis—in the same state, so he could be close to his friends.

Kenny is worried about losing his friends. But he is more worried about losing Wendy. Because he doesn't know how to lose her, but he might have to learn, fast.

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Kenny's always been good with his hands. He likes to fix things, like his dad, a mechanic. There's something really beautiful about the way things mesh together, and when he gets down to it and can make every part work right, Kenny can make a machine, an assortment of gears and cogs and pumps and levers, sing. And that's pretty satisfying, Kenny's always thought so.

Stan has a truck, and it's always breaking down. It's kind of a piece of shit. Kenny fixes it for him. Stan drives it on weekends, takes them all to Starks so they can sit in the bed on old blankets and watch the stars while listening to the crickets sing.

Now, Kenny lies on his back underneath Stan's car and squints into the sooty mechanisms along the underbelly. He feels his way through, working by touch and sound and instinct, and this way he knows which wires to cross and just how many times to turn the bolt, loosen the valve, calibrate the brake cable. Stan leans against the hood and talks down to him, and Kenny "hmms" and "huhs," not really listening, absorbed in his work.

And after awhile, Kenny nods in approval as he pulls his hands away, blackened with oil and grime from the road. He slides out from under the car and hold up a filthy thumb.

"All good, dude," he tells Stan, and is rewarded with the crooked, sheepish smile Stan gives in return.

"Thanks, Kenny," Stan slaps his shoulder. Kenny breathes in the simple pleasures of accomplishing something, being good enough to fix it.

They two stand and exchange amiable conversation for a little while. Stan slouches against the dusty metal of his truck's hood, and Kenny shoves his hands deep into his pockets and lean back on his heels. The sky is dizzyingly blue, blue like laugher, and he thinks he'd like to paint her dimples as clouds decorating the rejoicing blue sky.

Stan tells his friend that he's thinking about majoring in philosophy, Socrates and all that stuff, he explains, and Kenny hums pleasantly in acknowledgement. Before he can tell Stan that Socrates was pretty cool for a dude that gave lectures in the street wearing a bed sheet, Kyle joins them.

Sometimes the three of them just stand together, watching the sun go down over the hills. As the orange rays like shimmering gold glowing over the horizon, they don't need to say anything, as old friends often don't. They just stand, and watch, and feel the weight of their time-tested companionship like the earth beneath them. Steady, solid, and rich with a long history.

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Kenny thinks about clocks. He thinks they should go "tick tick tick BOOM." He thinks they should surprise you every once in a while. People look at clocks when they'd rather be doing something else. Kenny thinks if clocks mixed it up a little, they might look at clocks just because.

But he doesn't look at the clock, even though he's thinking about it. He looks at the end of his paintbrush. He looks at the arcs and lines of color weaving together under his hand, like a magical ribbon twisting over and over. His art professor will say he's not painting the apples in the center of the gallery. But he is. He's painting-candy-apple-red happiness splashed over white, the fist bite of a crisp, ripe fruit. He's painting the sunlight that glints off the red waxy surface of an apple hanging from the top of the tree. He's painting the juice dribbling down your chin, sun-warm and sweet. He's painting the weight of an apple in your palm. The crunching sound when your teeth sink all the way down into the flesh and pull it away. An apple isn't what you see under studio lights. An apple is a whole reel of experiences, and that's what's important to Kenny. That's what he wants to paint.

He also paints her eyes, because he always paints her eyes. No matter what he sets his brush too, his brushes are soaked with swirling blues and grays and violets, his hand destined to stroke over the page in the flickering caress of her gazes. The clear depths he layers with translucent watercolors mimic when he watches her awaken and he can still see her dreaming. The vibrant oil paints slip and slide like the expressions only the flitting of her eyes can tell. Each fuzzy pencil line is the contour of her sleeping eyes, shuttered and soft and gray, feathered with black lashes. Kenny paints her, always.

Kenny dunks his brushes in turpentine and leaves his painting on the easel instead of putting it up on the wall. On the wall with the lifeless apples, flat shapes on canvas, Kenny's painting doesn't fit in there. He doesn't try to make it fit.

He lets his lines tangle together, loose and free and bright, and he knows he's doing something different.

The teacher does the public critique, walking along the rows and trying to explain what translates an apple. What speaks the secrets of perfect, like you could reach through and pluck the apple from the page, like you'd want to if you saw it. Kenny listens, scratches the back of his head with his dirty, stubby fingernails. The teacher looks at him, and then to his painting standing off from the rest. She walks over to it, hands behind her back. And as she studies his work, she pushes her glasses up the bridge of her nose.

"Kenny," she says softly, "it's beautiful. You paint with a lot of love. But this isn't what I asked you to do. You were supposed to recreate the apple."

But I did, he wants to say. I recreated the apple, not just what I see, but what an apple is, how it's alive. I painted the autumn, when apples weight the branches of trees down and glint like dull red rubies from behind the leaves. I painted lips pressed to the fruit's smooth skin, giving way beneath your teeth sinking down into the white center. I painted the way apples smell, spicy and sweet, the amber-gold juice in a glass bottle and held to sparkle like clear topaz in the light. I painted an apple in real life, he wants to say, and everything good I've ever known in its terms.

But he doesn't say that. He shuffles and shrugs and wishes she would see, but she doesn't. She gives him another questioning stare and moves his painting to the wall. The big swipes of color intertwined in loose shapes, barely containing all that the subject portrays, look childish next to the austere fruits his classmates have submitted. Kenny knows he isn't wrong, but when he's lined up against the wall he feels wrong in an uncomfortable, curdling way.

He painted his apple with the curve of her smile and the light in her eyes, using the crinkle of her forehead and the bells of her laughter as a reference instead of the harsh studio lights and their sharp black shadows. The strict lines and shapes of a fruit that everyone can see. But Kenny sees her, everywhere, and so he paints her. After all, he can only paint what he sees.

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Kenny has lived with the Testaburgers since his dad kicked him out. He opens the door to find Wendy asleep in the old armchair she likes to do her reading in. Her straight black hair is still pushed behind her ears, which she only does when she wants it out of the way. Kenny likes to un-tuck it, run it between his fingers, brush over her cheek as he pulls the strands free to fall down around her face. She smiles a certain way when he does this like the sun breaking over a hill.

He puts a gentle, slow kiss on the high arch of her cheek and she stirs but does not wake. But in her sleep, she smiles. As if in her sleep, she knows him, she can still feel it's him. He touches the side of her chin, just barely grazing over her smooth, soft skin, and she leans into his touch and sighs. He wonders if she is dreaming about him. He likes her sleepy smile, and when she exhales "Kenny," quiet and happy, her mouth soft around his name, his heart explodes.

Kenny takes the open book from her lap (Physics: The World Unraveled), and closes it, puts it on the desk they share, carefully so it doesn't make a sound as he sets it down.

He likes this home. He likes the way Wendy stacks things, not in a particularly orderly way, but one on top of the other in endless, leaning piles all over the bedroom. Piles of clothes half folded, books half read, dishes half cleaned. He likes that all his belongings are tangled together with hers, not strangers but comfortable subjects of the room, all familiar with each other. He likes her reading glasses, folded delicately on their bedside table, the old lamps and their yellow lights making big golden illuminations on the walls. He likes everything about this place, likes coming back here. Here where his food and his bed are, where he is safe and warm and welcome, and here where she is, snug in bed, wrapped in blankets, with her precious head cradled in the pillows.

Kenny slips into the chair, fitting around Wendy, his chin over her shoulder. She nestles into him, and he closes his eyes. She fits against his chest, and he curls himself around her, forming his body around hers, keeping her close. Sometimes Kenny prays, prays for just one more day, with her. Time with Wendy seems too good, too good to keep, too good to last: the world isn't this good. He's terrified that one day he'll come back and she won't be here, that the world will swallow up this miracle he never knew how he deserved in the first place.

But for now, he is at peace. She is here, with him, and all the world is right as he drifts to sleep in the dusty old armchair with the Wendy Testaburger tucked in his arms.

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Kenny has a secret. A love making secret, which is the best kind, of course.

Wendy doesn't tell many people her secrets. And Kenny doesn't like to say she's guarded. Guarded sounds stony, cold. Drained of color and life and kept away from the world. Wendy is warmth and heaven, silk under Kenny's fingers, and smiles like blankets, safety and comfort to guide him through dreaming.

But she not something guarded or kept from the world, no—she is simply the quiet lily-pond reflection of the sky. When the wind blows or she is disturbed, her quiet beauty is dispersed in ripples, distorted into unreadable waves of light and intelligible shapes. But Kenny has waded deeply into her cool depths, waited, held completely still until every ripple was smoothed. Kenny's watched her reflect the world much brighter, more beautiful, a liquid mirror that holds the entire sky.

Wendy requires patience. She is worth being patient for.

And he never forgets this. When he makes love to her, he starts with her face. Holds her face in both palms and strokes his thumbs over her cheeks. He is erasing her worries; Wendy worries too much. He touches each line, each crevice that holds her anxieties, her fears, and he caresses them away with the tips of his finger and the bow of his lip. Gentle, never pushing but easing, easing away the tension, letting her know it's okay, he's got her.

It takes all day to make love to her sometimes. He whispers in the shell of her delicate ear, words tickling through hair as Kenny spreads his hands down her arms, holding her secure, holding her close. He wants her to feel so safe, it's more important than anything. He presses his head against her chest to hear her heart beat. He twines their hands and rests his forehead against hers, lying on his side and looking into her eyes. He's savoring her. He doesn't need to rush. He only needs her to feel safe. Safe and loved.

Kenny's secret is that he listens to her sighs.

Wendy speaks in sighs. That's how he can tell what she's feeling. Her long, slow sigh means she is drifting a million miles away, lost in a sea of thought. When she sighs like this, he knows he has to quiet the thunder in her mind before she can hear love's quiet voice again. Her abrupt, puffing sigh, a gust of air between silences, means she's upset. In this case, Kenny will comfort her, hold her, listen to her, help if he can, lend her strength when he can't do anything else. He'll do this until she breathes easy again.

And the soft, panting sigh, pitched with her tiny whines and framed in her huge blue eyes—all wonder and intensity—that's when he knows it's time. Only then can he touch her, remove her sweater one tender white shoulder at a time. Her socks and shoes. Roll down the rough, coarse material of her jeans to reveal butter-soft legs, kiss the insides of her wrists and grace her collarbone with more scorching kisses. Only then can he peel away her layers, when she feels totally safe—so she understands each and every time:

He loves her, and with every touch he presses it into her skin.

When he makes love to Wendy, it's like painting, which the most honest thing Kenny knows. And with every brush stroke, colors and lines running and blending together, he wants to paint her beautiful, because she is. It's worth turning into artwork; it's the truest thing in the world.

It takes hours, minutes or days. Kenny doesn't care. He only ever wants more time with her.