How many times had he tried this?
How many times has he failed?
How many more times would he have to keep trying before he succeeded?
How many times could he mess up before people started to think he was a little nutty?
He lost count.
But he kept trying.
At the bus stop.
During lunch.
During recess.
Heading home.
At dinner.
And even as he kept at it, he began to question himself more and more.
Should he keep trying?
Why was he doing this again?
Because it was important.
He at least knew that much.
But every time he tried, he couldn't summon anything except bile and lumps to his throat.
Then he would cry every night over his fifty million failures to work his damn mouth.
Cry because he needed to tell them this very important thing in his own words and couldn't.
Cry because he was a wimp and he knew it.
Cry because he had to keep trying until they knew what he had to tell them.
He would cry himself to sleep, then wake up the next morning ready to try again.
Even if he could only tell a single person, that would do.
Because telling one person something important turns into telling the whole town that thing.
He didn't want everyone to know, but they would all find out eventually anyway.
People always found out one way or another.
And if he could help it, people would find out because he spoke the words to another soul first.
One more try.
It's what he tells himself every time he tries to open his mouth about this topic.
It's what he's telling himself right now.
Just one more try.
He takes a deep breath and marches forward toward the bus stop.
Nothing fancy.
Just get it out there.
His friends are waiting for him, or at least the two most serious ones are.
Breath in.
Breath out.
Kyle turns to face him as he approaches.
"Hey, Stan! Cartman's sick today, he's got the runs," the jew laughs.
He gives a smile and short chuckle.
Kenny who's standing behind Kyle snorts a laugh himself.
It's calm enough, but he can still feel the bile rising.
He just has to push past it.
And if he throws up afterwards, so be it.
He will do it this time.
A deep breath in and…
He throws up before getting a single word out.
He'll have to try again later.
Because if he can't tell anyone now, he can't protect himself later.
If he can't speak soon, people will still find out later.
And there'll be hell to pay if everybody finds out any other way.
So he has to keep trying.
Until the very end...
Alright, so I have to options for Stan's big secret he's trying to tell people about, but I couldn't decided which to use. I also wanted to try and make this at least a little poetic. So, I just decided to end it like this. If I get enough responses I might be willing to write a second part to this, suck it up, and pick at more or less random which of my two big secret options to use, because I could go either way with this pretty easily.
Anyway, what did you think? Good? Bad? Feedback is wonderful.
Thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed!