Age 12.

Ike plucked the red corded receiver with a clammy hand, gritted his teeth and swallowed hearing the soft click as it separated from the handset. The dial-tone rattling too-loud against his skull and he flinched at what he couldn't help resenting as a challenge. He punched clumsily with a narrow index finger that caved at the first knuckle the numbers he knew by heart but not by hand.

It was midnight by the time Sheila and Gerald retired which meant by the time Ike clutched the tolling phone to the side of his head, folded into the compartment under the laundry room table, it was already past 02:00 Kyle-Time. Kyle was still awake of course.

"Hi this is Kyle Broflovski—"

"Kyle!"

"—can't make it to the phone right now. Leave a message and I'll—try to call you back I guess."

The voicemail greeting was new. Kyle intoned the whole thing at a growl, only the end of his own name overwhelmed by the staleness of auto-introduction, a click of the tongue ill-concealed by a sharp inhale at the pause between "I'll" and "try." The words felt strange against Ike's ears, the hoarse timbre of the recorded voice distressingly familiar but lacking its customary vehemence. He called again, to no avail. He wrought the fastenings of his half-zip fleece between his fingers, squeezed his eyes shut and gritted his teeth, called until the voicemail greeting wasn't new anymore.

He let his head fall back against the wall. It all was dismally frustrating.

"Ike?"

Gerald speaking.

Ike started, slammed down the phone and shoved the handset behind him against the wall. The phone cords were attached to the same power strip as the digital clock and old Omron blood pressure monitor and there was an awful clattering on the table surface above him. His pulse revved and he snatched his ankles sticking out from underneath the desk, drew his knees against his chest kind of helplessly. He watched Gerald's slipper-clad feet approach, hairy shins pale against a burgundy bathrobe. Gerald lowered himself, a hand on the desk anchoring his [awkward] squat.

"What are you doing down here Ike?"

The phone set, an unfortunate shade of red that contested Sheila's lipstick, stuck out from behind Ike's back. He thrust the thing away, scowled. There hung between them one of those mutually-expectant silences between diffidents during which Ike glared flush-cheeked at his feet and Gerald drummed his fingers on the desktop and tried not to make any gestures that might intimate his wanting to speak.

"Kyle's not coming home," Ike finally blurted. Accusatory.

"I know."

"Why is Mom like that. What does she always have to, like—" Ike broke off, threw his elbows over his knees, suddenly fighting the need to ventilate rapidly "—antagonize him like that?"

Fact was he could think of descriptors far more vile than 'antagonize' but he didn't use them because he had, in recent years, developed an auxiliary adoptee-conscience that gave him a regarding-surrogate-progenitors deference that somewhat exceeded average. Gerald released from his crouch to slump against the washing machine next to Ike and rubbed the strip of mustache under his nose with the side of his index finger.

"You know how those two are, Ike."

"But she can at least not be such a bitch that she makes Kyle not even wanna come home for winter break!"

Oops. Gerald exhaled lengthily through his nose, itched the side of his nostril with a crooked finger.

"I know kiddo. But it's not your mother's fault ok? Kyle's—"

"It is!"

"—it really is not Ike, ok? Now let's get you to bed." Gerald stood, offered a hand to Ike still skulking under the desk. "Kyle's not gonna pick up anyway, he's probably—"

"He's not asleep."

"Don't be petulant Ike."

"Well I wanna see him!" Ike shouted. "It's his first year at college and he's supposed to be all homesick and stuff and—and—wanna come back to see us and—"

He was beginning to swipe furiously at his eyes, thin visage wrought with vexation, and when Gerald bent to shush him, grasped him by his wrists—"Don't yell Ike, you're gonna wake your mother!"—he reeled from the touch, smoldering from beneath his skin with a curious, inexplicable shame. He hid his face against his shoulder drawing hitched breaths through bared teeth as Gerald drew him gently from under the table.

"Come on, up you go—watch your head—thatta boy."

Gerald half-carried Ike upstairs, passed his own and Sheila's cracked door seeping lamplight, the sliver of light through which Ike glimpsed Sheila's plump form curled around a towel-wrapped hot water bottle, brows flickering fitfully even in slumber. Ike wrenched himself away from Gerald, scrambled down the dark hallway to his own room and sank down against the door as he closed it, listened with his ear against the board for Gerald's inevitable drawn sigh, for the lamp on his parents' bedside drawer clicking off.

By 01:37 MST, or 03:37 KT, Ike was back in the laundry room huddled in the cavity between the wall and the washing machine, laptop that used to by Kyle's perched on his knees, bawling artlessly with Sheila's credit card clenched between his teeth and windshield-wiping the blur from his eyes as he scrolled through Expedia results for flights from DEN to JFK departing anytime tomorrow (12/08/yyyy) default sorted: Price (Low to High).

–––

Ike braced his shoulders against the black window, collarbones collapsed and temple against the pane, a perforated scrap reading 'Long Island Railroad' creased over his thumb. He was still harrowed from having nearly missed Jamaica, still feverish and dry-mouthed from the flight during which he'd slept on laced arms over the fold-out tray the way Filmore Anderson slept in class. Ike had hitched a ride with Wendy to the airport—Wendy lightly roasted by California sun and on her way to retrieve Stan—so barely that the operation had given him that eerie euphoria of some divine fluke. He'd almost skated into her bumper when she slammed on the breaks. Wendy gave him that quirk-browed eye-over, taking in his untied sneakers, sleepless plum-socketed eyes and cheeks throbbing pink, backpack filled with nothing, unconvinced but running too late to adhere to any agendum of accountability and so compensated by interrogating him the entire hour to Denver. He averted her queries with a montage of lies that made head ache with a sort of moral vertigo. He liked her.

Ike eyed the beady red letters glinting from the electronic headboard reading: Penn Station.

It was 18:12 p.m. Kyle-Time on 12/08—Ike's time now too—and 16:12 MST where Gerald and Sheila were, dutifully believing he was at Filmore's right then, or so he fervently hoped. He didn't have a phone. He hadn't told anyone. He clasped his hands, wrought these feelings away with a screw of his fingers.

At 18:29 Ike scrambled onto the arrival platform.

He inhaled.

Scarce, torrid air that supplied to the lungs only volume. Ike inhaled again, doubly. He found himself undersea in humans, bodies that flushed and pooled against him, against the station's yellowing tunnel walls, against the ceilings it seemed. He wrung his zipper between his hands, couldn't see over the shoulders so let himself be washed forward, stumbling wide-eyed up a flight of stairs pillowed by wool coats, scarves, handbags and hair. A fur collar that brushed against his parched lips. He thought of Kyle.

The tributary of commuters released Ike into a rumbling concourse, the reverberations of which Ike felt in his chest and spine, and as he tried wide-eyed to accept it all he stumbled, gasping atonement when he realized he'd flat-tired the most elite-looking foot he'd ever seen—a camel-suede wingtip oxford with a striated sole—not even to be spared a moment's fuck-you glance.

Ike recoiled against the side of a ticket machine panting, clutching the collar of his dusty-blue fleece with his slush-stained ski jacket hanging off his shoulders, too stunned by it all to even tell which the hell way was up. More faces flashing by, more permutations of features than he could ever have imagined even existed on the blue planet Earth. Trench hems and briefcases and skirts slapped across his knees, winter wraps and purse straps his face, and he closed his eyes, tried to withdraw into himself so he could think. Kyle had been here. Kyle had done this. Stifling his dismay that this was the jungle that had eaten Kyle, Ike slapped a hand over his trembling mouth and tried to inhale through his nose. He sucked and flushed stagnant air until he was dizzy.

When he opened his eyes, he straightened his little twelve-year-old shoulders and readied himself to cut across the current.

–––

It was snowing hard on the streets—not as cold as home but a hell ton windier—and Ike arrived at Kyle's dorm a couple hours later with whipped cheeks and numb lips that made it hard to enunciate as he confronted the housing sentry. She was black and plump and reminded him of Chef except plus a weave and minus amiability.

"Sir—sir—I can't let you in without ID."

Were it not for Ike's mounting agitation he would've found it funny she called him 'sir' even though he was twelve and looked it.

"But I'm here to see my older brother. He lives here, his name is Kyle Broflovski and—"

"Campus policy. Sorry."

"Well can—can you call him for me?" he asked hopefully, wringing his hands. The woman scanned him, decided he looked innocent enough and her day shitty enough, yanked a slim receiver from under her desk and cocked a brow at him for the number. It was a terrible silence waiting, the her weaving the phone cord between acrylic-nailed fingers, him standing pigeon-toed and picking at the teeth of his zipper.

"He's not there."

Ike's fingers closed around the front of his jacket.

"Ah. Y-yeah. I'll just—I'll just wait then," he whispered, turning away. He felt her eyes on his back but he didn't care. He led himself to corner of the entrance hall, let himself sink down. For the first time in the day he felt he really did have to cry, really could not for the life of him hold it back for one more second, and so he let down his forehead onto his elbows folded over his knees, screwed his eyes shut and pinched his inside cheek-flesh between his molars, thinking of what a mistake it all seemed. Not his impetuous little jaunt in and of itself, but more like a mistake simply existed—a massive, muddy, snaggle-tusked elephant in his ill-ventilated subleased apartment of a life but for all his twelve-year-old body was worth, so help him God, he could not say it.

He remembered Kyle leaving for college, barely five months ago, so hostile towards the departure he'd refused to accompany Sheila and Gerald in sending Kyle off, had fled the house and stayed holed in Filmore's bedroom for the weekend and when he'd finally had it in him to sulk home Kyle had long cleared out. Seeing Kyle's drawers gutted and mattress stripped, closet empty but for a few jackets that didn't fit anymore, presumably designated for Ike's later use, Ike had fallen into a fever, folded onto his knees clutching his elbows, his arms clamped over his vitals a futile surrogate for the ambient pressure that was Kyle, gone.

It didn't seem to Ike then that there was anywhere else in the world outside South Park. Oh people said there was, but when they arrived home again on their old front doorsteps, they had changed, and the boys and girls who left the town were gone forever.

These were the sorts of grandly depressive thoughts that mulled in Ike's brain until exhaustion conquered him and he crumpled, drooling mildly, against the dirty wall. He didn't stir as the sentry, fifteen minutes past the end of her shift at 21:17 KT draped her uniform vest over him before donning a long overcoat and departing into the blinking, roaring night.

–––

Kyle wasn't even in. It was past midnight by the time he arrived back, assaulting the doorframe trying to concuss the ice from his sneakers, soaked paper corners jutting from where he didn't care to marry his backpack zippers, red-eared and blue-lipped and looking generally pissed off. He'd just clouted the ID scanner with his wallet when he discerned in his periphery a little form against the wall, nose tucked into a swath of navy fabric. Black hair and a thin face. He knew it couldn't be, but he took a few steps towards the figure anyway, turned back over his shoulder to the graveyard-shifter, a greasy-lidded Egyptian guy.

"How long's he been here?"

"Dunno man. Since before I was."

Kyle frowned, approached, footsteps quickening of their own accord. He knelt down, fingers weak as he tugged the fabric of what appeared to be an overlarge security guard's vest away from the pale skin.

"Holy hell," he breathed. "How did you get here?"

Ike roused crusty-eyed, mouth cracked and eyes narrowed reluctant to affirm, but when he saw it was indeed Kyle, rusty hair frost-flaked and celadon eyes wide as an owl's, threw his arms around Kyle's neck with a little whimper. Kyle exhaled disjointed consolations, held Ike against his chest with arms strung around and hands clutching the back of Ike's ribs. Ike, who was positive that wings would sprout from the place, that feathers would fold out from between Kyle's fingers and spring stiff. Kyle, stunned practically cross-eyed himself, cooed softly, hummed, laced his fingers under Ike's bony kid-butt and hoisted him off the floor letting Ike fasten his skinny ankles around his waist koala-like.

The security guard watched them with slack-jawed fascination, overrode the scan-gate for Kyle to carry Ike upstairs.

"Oh my god," Kyle kept mumbling, almost to himself, shaking his head with disbelief. Ike turned his head into Kyle's lips scraping over his ears as they moved, lips so chapped by winter gale their surfaces had begun to disintegrate into sharp flakes. Ike didn't really listen, just felt the hoarse murmur against his eardrums, reverberating sternum against his own. Kyle pulled Ike closer, a quiet horror dawning on him as they waited for the elevator. "I saw you spam-calling from home but I thought it was Mom."

Ike only hid his face in Kyle's sleet-stiffened collar and twined his legs more tightly. That night he slept curled against the hollow of Kyle's waist, shins against Kyle's thigh, feeling so sweetly dulled like the world had been turned right-side up again and things he didn't want to think about exiled from his consciousness. Kyle swathed Ike in all the covers, let Ike sleep in the crook of his arm, let his own exhaustion-limp fingers trail beneath the fabric of Ike's T-shirt collar. On a twin oak-framed cot next to the sleeping form whose long breaths fluttered over his skin lulling him to sleep, Ike let himself be filed safely away from the scintillating, snarling city, away from railroad junctions made namesakes of irrelevant Caribbean destinations, away from loneliness.