"Oh boy. There's Cartman." Stan pointed out.
He was kicking a soccer ball around when he noticed Cartman there. Why hadn't he approached Stan and Kyle like he usually did? Sure, he was gone for a few weeks, but they thought he'd come back to school the same. Stan stopped the soccer ball with his feet and then let it roll away from him because he was too fixated on watching Cartman who was far away from them. He was sitting alone at recess and…man, was he mellowed out. Cartman was never mellowed out, and ever since getting back from the mental hospital, Principle Victoria was concerned that Cartman wasn't the same volatile, angry child and almost wanted him to get sent to detention but he hadn't said a word and it was already lunch time.
"Come on, dude. Let's go rip on him for seeing ghosts!" Kyle sniggered and pulled on the sleeve of Stan's jacket. "He's probably talking to Kenny right now."
Yeah, probably… Stan thought.
He may have agreed with Kyle, but he knew that wasn't right wasn't right; he knew that there was a reason Cartman was distancing himself. Was it because he was talking to Kenny? Then why did they release him?
Stan couldn't do that to a friend…even if it were Cartman.
Anyway, when the two of them had hung out on the boat one time, there were times when Cartman could be cool to hang around with when he wasn't being a dangerous sociopath.
But now…he wasn't Cartman. He hadn't been lately.
"No, dude." Stan stopped him before Kyle was about to go over and approach Cartman. "Don't talk to him about Kenny." His voice was serious. "I don't think we should rip on him for that. Staying in a mental hospital for weeks is pretty serious. Don't you know what they do to kids in there?"
"No, and I don't want to know." Kyle looked horrified at the thought because—if there was one thing he hated—it was pills because kids shouldn't be taking them and so he shivered slightly. "But you really think so?" He cocked an eyebrow in concern. "So we shouldn't call him fat anymore either?"
"No. The fat comments are okay, but Kenny was our friend and it seems like Cartman really missed him when he died, you know? That's what we've never seen from him."
Kyle nodded. He pulled onto Stan's sleeve again, said, "Yeah, okay, Stan. Okay," and then they walked up to Cartman.
"How was the mental hospital, fatass?" Kyle asked, and when he looked at Cartman—really looked at him—he didn't look like the same Cartman that he knew.
He looked back at him with a blank expression. "It was okay, I guess. The food sucked ass, though, and the doctors told me I have shizophrenia because I can't get over the death of my dear friend, Kenny." He shook his head and laughed to himself.
To Stan and Kyle, though, he didn't know why he was laughing about the death of their best friend. What they didn't know was that Kenny was sitting right next to Cartman as he told them all this, and he had staggered around with Cartman since his most recent death because—well, because he was the only one who fucking remembered.
"Anyway, how are you guys?" He gave them a crazed smile.
Stan blinked. "Dude. Did you just come back from a parallel universe? You never ask how we are!"
"What? And now that I am there must be something wrong with me, Stan? Is that what you're saying? I was in a mental hospital. I'm on medication. I'm too damn tired to be an asshole right now, alright?"
"Well that's really cool of you, Cartman." Kyle smiled. "So you're all better now? We're not gonna hear anymore talk about Kenny?"
"Hmmm. Nope. I'm all better now, Kyle. I'm totally sweet again." He looked over at Kenny who had his eyebrows narrowed down into slits because he was angry for being ignored. You couldn't do much as a ghost, and that's why he had Cartman, and that's why Kenny liked when he was in the mental institution because that was where Cartman could acknowledge him; that's where he could acknowledge him tot all the other mental patients but he also knew that he had to get out of there and accept himself how the doctors had thought he was shizophrenic.
Cartman tried not to look away too long so Stan and Kyle wouldn't give him a weird look. He coughed into his sleeve, looked at Stan and Kyle and asked them, "Uh, can you guys give me some time alone? Thanks, you guys."
"Sure, dude. Text us if you wanna hang out, okay? Come on, Kyle."
"See ya, Cartman." Kyle said before shuffling away from Cartman with Stan and then said in a low voice to him, "Man. He's more mellow than I thought…"
Cartman looked around the playground and waited until Stan and Kyle couldn't hear him anymore. He couldn't acknowledge Kenny when he was around them because they didn't understand. Why was Cartman the one who had to see him?
Oh.
Because he ate his ashes because he thought they were chocolate milk.
That was why.
"What's your fuckin' problem, dude?" Kenny asked Cartman while he was laying down in the grass. He faced him from the other side and made a pout face at him. "Why won't you talk to me?"
Cartman looked at him and sighed. "It's 'cause you're dead, Kenny, and I just got out of the hospital. Do you really think I wanna go back there? Yeah, I'm an asshole, but I'm not crazy!" On the other side of the playground, Stan and Kyle were sitting on opposite sides of the table so they could look at each other. Kyle, though, kept diverting away to Cartman. That was the first time he hadn't thrown back a snide comment at him and, while he always knew he could change, it wasn't the right kind of change.
"Does Cartman kinda look like he's talking to Kenny again?" Kyle asked Stan. "You see his lips moving too, right, Stan? I thought he was done with that shit."
"Yeah, I see it, dude. Oh boy."