Wendy walked into the soup kitchen. It was 6:53 am and she wasn't even a little tired, as she usually had something booked that required her getting up this early most days anyway.
She was sixteen, a slightly stocky blue eyed overachiever, who attended regular meetings of The Young Philosophers Club, she was head of the Drama and French Club and helped out with the support group the school counsellor had implemented on Tuesday afternoons.
She played lacrosse and got straight A's. She carried an immense passion for caring and advocating for the less fortunate through her life, which tells you what she was doing at the soup kitchen.
The same could not be said for Stan Marsh, whom was working at the kitchen trying to fulfil a mandatory 72 hours of community service.
His drinking got heavier, starting with seventh grade he was seldom seen attending school.
He'd pick a day each semester to show up, quite often he'd appear obviously hungover.
By eighth grade he'd broken up with Wendy via a drunk dial, which his sober alter ego had been intending to do anyway, he claims.
Stan attended two days of his freshman year and during the summer he urinated on Kyle's house after he'd hooked up with Eric at a party.
He yelled all the insults, bigoted remarks and taunts Cartman had used to torment Kyle when they were kids, at least as many as he could remember in his usual state of drunken stupor.
Sheila pressed charges and here he was, vowing to himself he'd make no attempt to interact with anyone and he'd thaw all the food while listening to amateur remixes of Wiz Khalifa on Spotify.
It barely even fazed him when his former elementary school sweetheart walked in and hung her coat up on the back of the kitchen door.
The same could not be said for Wendy, who had to do a triple take upon seeing Stan.
He was holding a couple boxes of frozen pastries and was putting them on a large tray, head down, mouthing along to the music playing through his earphones.
She wasn't sure what to say.
"Hi, Stan…" Wendy tried to initiate a conversation, in a half-assed peppy/perky tone.
He looked up and acted like he hadn't heard her, because his music was so loud, he actually hadn't.
She gestured for him to take his headphones out by tugging at the air around her ears. "Oh. Hi, Wendy."
He immediately tried to put them back in, but she gave him a stern look.
"If you're going to ask what I'm doing here, don't bother, I'm not telling."
She chuckled "Don't be silly, Stan! I've heard…How many hours?"
"72."
A shitty remix of a Drake song was blaring through Stan's headphones.
"Ugh, can you turn that off? I can't stand rap music…"
"Good for you."
Silence.
"Geez, just trying to start conversation…we get a new person here for community service every week and usually they'r-"
"There you go again."
Wendy felt her eyes roll into the back of her head. She stalked off into the kitchen for a new box of pastries.