I aimed my plastic gun at the TV in my living room, resting my finger on the trigger button of the Wii remote inside it as the game loaded, and tried to stop my hands from shaking. I was so nervous I was starting to feel queasy, and it took almost everything I had to keep my eyes focused on the TV screen in front of me. Every two minutes I had to go through a mental list of everything I had to do to seem like nothing was wrong. Eyes on the game, check. Both hands on the gun controller, check. Legs willing to support me enough that I don't collapse out of nervousness, check ...Ish. I had to keep shifting my weight from leg to leg every time I let my thoughts wander back to the thing I really didn't want to be thinking about, or else I really would just fall over.

I was concentrating so hard on keeping still and acting normal that somehow I forgot to pay attention to the video game I was playing; when the first wave of zombies showed up, my aim was way off, and I ended up shooting one of the innocents. Instantly, I felt my entire body tense, and thought to myself, not for the first time today, that maybe playing House of the Dead this afternoon was a really bad idea. Clearly I just didn't have the ability to concentrate today, and was that really my fault? God, we'd only had Kenny's funeral a week ago, should I really be playing stupid video games? Wasn't that disrespectful in some way?

A zombie dropped down from the bridge above my video game character, latching onto him, and I started shaking my controller to get it off. Goddammit. It was something like our thirtieth time starting the game over, we were only on the second level, and I was already almost dead. I was playing like Token, and even though he was my best friend and everything, I was never afraid to tell him he sucked at killing zombies, and he knew it too. He played House of the Dead about as well as I played Tony Hawk. The point was, as egotistical as it may have sounded, I was a million times better at this game than he was. I didn't have much when it came to any kind of talent, but I could always cling to the fact that I kicked ass at a video game. For me to be playing at his skill level right now was proof of just how focused I wasn't.

I shook my gun controller harder in one last attempt to shake off the zombie, even though I was so close to death it was almost pointless. As if I needed more proof that I was way off my game today, my controller slipped out of my hands and flew across the room, landing with a thud on the carpet. Almost immediately I felt tears of frustration flood my eyes and I moved quickly over to where my controller had fallen, trying to keep them from spilling out.

"Dude." The voice from behind me made me instantly tense up. I froze where I was, on my knees on the carpet, holding the plastic gun tightly in my right hand. "You okay?"

If it had been a different time, in a different place, I might have laughed at the question. No, not at the question, actually, at the person asking me the question. Because, best friends or not, Craig Tucker had not sincerely asked me if I was all right since... Since fifth grade, back before my parents had discovered that two weeks away was a temporary miracle cure for all their marital problems. Back when they were fighting pretty much twenty-four/seven and it really looked like they were going to get a divorce. I'd been a miserable ten-year-old kid – who wouldn't have been, really? – and Craig, still a douchebag back then, but still my best friend too, had asked me how I was and meant it.

Even then, I'd known what a big deal it was for him to openly admit to caring like that – he had his whole, super-tough-guy-better-than-Cartman reputation to worry about and everything. Not that he didn't care. I knew he did. Even though all of last year there'd been so many reasons to doubt that, some part of me had always known that us being best friends meant he had to care about me in some way. It just wasn't the same way he cared about Tweek.

My grip on the gun controller tightened suddenly. There it was, exactly what I didn't want to be thinking about: Craig and Tweek, and the feelings I got whenever I thought about them together. Some of it was physical – I got knots in my stomach, and I felt dizzy – but most of it was just more emotion than I could handle, and it wouldn't stop. I couldn't escape my own brain, no matter how much I wanted to, and once the Craig/Tweek slideshow had started in my mind, I couldn't stop it.

I'd always been a little uncomfortable being around the two of them when they were being all couple-y, but I hadn't ever questioned it, it was just a fact. There hadn't been any reason for me to ever look any deeper than the surface for an explanation. Skies were always blue, water was always wet, mushrooms would always be a fungus, and Craig and Tweek together always made me feel weird and awkward. So I avoided looking at them when I was around them. That was all there was to it.

Except that wasn't all there was to it. And even now, now that I knew that and knew that I had to deal with it, I just didn't want to. I wasn't like any of the rest of them , I couldn't adapt to things as easily as they could. I couldn't just... I couldn't find out something like this about myself and be okay and ready to move on and be a different kind of person in just a few days. It may have worked for the rest of them, but I just couldn't do it. I'd spent my whole life believing I was one person, knowing who I was and happy enough about it, and then things got flipped upside-down and turned backwards and I wasn`t who I thought I was anymore, and so much of my life had changed. I hated change, I always had, especially huge changes, and everything that had changed for me in the last week was huge.

"Yeah," I finally managed to mumble, slowly getting back to my feet. I lifted my free hand up to push some hair out of my eyes as I returned to my original spot in my living room, staring at the carpet the entire time. It was a blatant lie, and I knew it. I wasn't okay, not even close, but there was really no reason that I should be. My horribly timed discovery of feelings I'd never wanted to learn about aside, there was still everything else that had happened to me – to all of us. To one of us in particular. I looked up, at one of the walls of my living room, and remembered how a week earlier – though it felt so much longer than that – Token had been scrubbing at what he thought was pizza sauce.

There was no trace of red on the wall now, though – my parents must have found a way to get rid of the blood. I didn't know how; I'd been avoiding talking to them, to pretty much everyone, really. Token and I had gone to the McCormick's the day after we'd gotten back, a month ago, to tell them about Kenny dying, but after that, I'd mostly been staying in my room. There was too much I had to think about, and I couldn't – didn't want to – talk to anybody about anything. Because to explain to them how I was feeling would mean I had to explain everything – all of my feelings were connected, and to talk about Kenny meant that I would sooner or later have to talk about Craig. I wasn't ready for that, and I wasn't sure I ever would be.

I heard Craig sigh and looked up in time to see him toss his Wii gun on the couch beside him, not even bothering to turn off the game. "Bullshit," he said, shaking his head. "I don't know why you still try to lie. You're hopeless at it." The words came out harshly, but I knew him well enough to know he didn't mean it that way, that he was actually genuinely interested in a serious conversation about my feelings. And maybe if things were different I would be able to appreciate that fact more than I did right now, but as it was, I was already so emotionally messed up I could barely look at my best friend; this new concerned-for-my-well-being Craig Tucker definitely wasn't helping. He wasn't supposed to care about me, he was supposed to just be his sarcastic self and treat me the same way he always had and save his abnormal niceness for Tweek, because Tweek had already adjusted to it over the years and it wasn't freakishly weird for him. Not like it was for me.

Not knowing what else to do, I shrugged, looking down at the Wii controller in my hand. I suddenly felt twelve different kinds of awkward, just standing there in my living room. I wanted to sit down, but I'd just gotten up off the floor and the only couch was over by where Craig was standing, all the way across the room. Number one, I didn't know if I would be able to move steadily enough to actually make it over there, and number two...it was right near Craig. God, this was so much harder than I'd thought it would be. I should've just told him I was busy when he showed up on my doorstep this morning, I should've told him my parents had told me I couldn't have anyone over... I should've done something to avoid being alone with him. Or maybe I just never should've answered the door in the first place.

But my parents were both gone, and I'd just come downstairs from my room to get a sandwich, and then the doorbell rang... And I'd been reading Kenny's letter to me for the millionth time, and I'd thought that maybe it was Token at my door, and maybe Kenny was right and I should talk to him, at least a little bit about how I was feeling. I mean, even if it was all really general and vague, it still might have helped. I didn't have to talk to him about Craig, not yet – if ever. I could talk about everything but him, at least then I'd be talking and not keeping everything inside and having a horrible stomachache all the time.

So I'd left my sandwich in the kitchen and gone to the door, but when I swung it open Craig was standing there, wearing his blue hat with his longish black hair sticking out from underneath it, his hands in the pockets of his ICP hoodie, looking exactly the same as he always did, except Tweek wasn't anywhere near him.

And it was Tweek not being there that really threw me off. I honestly couldn't remember the last time before today that I'd seen Craig without Tweek around. A week ago I would have killed to have time with just Craig; now I wanted to do anything but be around only him. At least if it had been the two of them, and I'd let them in to hang out, then maybe they would've been too distracted by each other – as usual - to notice that I was acting any differently. If they'd both been here, I probably would have called Token and asked him to come over too so I at least could hang out with him while Craig and Tweek were...busy. Or maybe it would have been easier to for me to not let them in if they came over together, maybe seeing them beside each other would jump start my brain into working right again. I would remember that they were Craig Tucker and Tweek Tweak, inseparable forever no matter what feelings I may or may not have, and I needed to get over my stupid hopeless crush on my best friend.

But it hadn't been both of them, it had just been Craig, and I'd been so caught off guard by that, that when he'd looked past me into my living room and said, "Zombies?" all I'd been able to do was stutter, "Um... 'Kay." And all I'd been trying to do for the last hour was pretend that nothing was wrong or different and that I was okay.

But he was right, and I knew that – I was a horrible liar, and Craig's bullshit radar was off the charts accurate. Even if there was a chance that I could fool Token, my parents, anyone else, I couldn't fool Craig. But I couldn't tell him what was wrong. I couldn't. It would screw everything up, and things would get so awkward between us if he knew what I was suddenly feeling about him. God, and Tweek... My stomach twisted with guilt as I imagined how he would feel. Tweek, as paranoid as he was, had really good something-isn't-right-here intuition. He would instantly know something was different, and he would get scared, and that would make things even more complicated. With everything that those two had gone through in less than two years, I didn't think that Craig would be able to keep the truth from him. And if Tweek found out...then he would probably end up hating me, or at the very least not wanting to be around me very much. The logical train of thought there was that if Tweek didn't want to be around me, chances were I'd lose Craig too.

"Hey." When I didn't answer, Craig repeated, "Hey." His voice was really close to my ear, and when I looked up I was staring right at the zipper of Craig's hoodie, less than a foot away from me. "Dude, seriously. You need to talk?"

I shook my head; tears flooded my eyes and I tried desperately to keep some kind of control over myself. "I'm sorry," I managed to say, avoiding looking at Craig's face. This was too hard for me. I didn't know how to act anymore. Being honest right now would make me lose my best friend, but keeping things inside was making me sick. For the first time in a week, I actually wanted to talk about everything that had happened, but I didn't want to talk about things to Craig.

I wanted to talk to one of two people who'd proven to me that they wouldn't immediately judge me for anything I was feeling, but they were two people I was never going to see again. At least, not until I died – again. The kind of death that nobody could bring me back from. But even then, depending on where I wound up after that, I'd only get to see one of the two of them, and it made me feel awful but I wasn't sure which one I wanted to see and talk to more.

My grip tightened on the gun controller as I remembered Taco Loco. That place was the only thing I missed about being dead. Mitch – the owner, Mitch Hedberg, Craig`s favourite comedian, of all people – hadn't known me from a hole in the ground, which had made it so much easier to talk to him without worrying. He listened, he really listened to me, when I was crying on his counter and speaking in half-English, half gibberish. His comments didn't have one shred of bias in them because he wasn't a part of my life, he didn`t know the people I knew. He was able to be more honest with me than I was sure any of my friends could have been.

"Fuck, man, don't be sorry." Craig paused, and I saw him glance down at his wrist, at his watch. When he spoke again there was something different in his voice, but I couldn't decipher what it was. "I have to go to work. You... You can talk to me if you need a. Someone. Okay?"

"Okay," I replied, my voice barely above a whisper. I didn't even register Craig walking away, or my front door opening and then closing again. I sunk down onto the living room floor and curled into a ball. There was too much in my head, and I couldn't deal with it all, I needed some way to get it out, but who was there for me to talk to?

The only friend I had who came close to being like Mitch was Kenny - not that anybody else was incapable of caring. I mean, Butters cared about everything and everyone, and technically he already knew about how I felt – I hadn't meant to at the time, he'd just been right there when I'd finally come to terms with exactly what I was feeling and exactly what that mean, and I'd kind of had a verbal heart attack at him and probably scared him to death.

But he and I weren't close, and I knew myself, I knew that I couldn't talk to him again about things now and not feel awkwardly stupid. That, and...Butters, for whatever reason, was in love with Cartman, and after dying and being split up the way they had been, it didn't seem like the time for me to want to come talk to him about my stupid life and its messed up problems. Kenny, though... He was the other person I wanted to talk to and couldn't. He was – different, to talk to about things. He could pick up on someone's whole issue by only hearing two words. It would be easier to talk to him because he would understand completely without needing me to say more than a sentence or two. And since I could hardly even think about how I felt about Craig without crying – I sniffled, my vision blurring as a few tears dripped from my eyes onto the Wii controller that was still in my hand.

The difference between Kenny and Mitch was that Kenny would be too concerned about how I was feeling and he would try to make things better for me. That was just the kind of person he was, he'd proven that by sacrificing himself. I wasn't ungrateful about that aspect of Kenny – there had been so many times in my life that he'd been the best person in the world to talk to – but there were times when I just wanted to talk and have someone listen, like Mitch had up in Heaven just before Kenny had brought us back. I just couldn't tell if this was one of those times, or if I really needed Kenny to talk to. Especially since in the letter he'd written me, he'd made it perfectly clear that he'd known, or at least had an idea of, my newfound Craig issue. Maybe, in his Kenny-way, he could've said something, given me some advice, that would make all of this easier for me. Maybe he would've known what to do.

Or maybe he had. Part of his letter to me echoed in my mind: 'All I can say is that when you're ready, really ready to trust someone enough to talk to them about it, talk to Token… He'll understand, I know he will, and I know he'll be there for you, no matter what…" It was simple, and something I'd considered, but never gotten up the nerve to do. Which was stupid, really; this was Token, who'd I'd always been so close with that I considered him more of a sibling than a friend. I shouldn't be afraid to talk to him about anything. Token was a lot of things, but he'd never, in all the years I'd known him, been a bad friend to me. Maybe it was time I trusted him with more than just my superficial problems.