I decided that, since, to me, Kenny is the most interesting of the four boys, I would tell the story in two perspectives: from Katelin's and his. But this doesn't mean that they're going to be the pairing. Oh, no. Of the six comments I got, it was too mixed. I'm just going to roll with it and see what people want as the story goes on.

Much love,

The Author Lady

Last night, I dreamed of sex, drugs, and rock and roll. I flew across the world in luxury I had only imagined, tumbling around with girls who didn't mind if I didn't buy them flowers or take them to dinner, was loved and adored as I never had been. It was fucking amazing. When I woke up in my bed, tangled in sweaty sheets and panting a little, my groans of frustration were so loud that my mother actually pulled herself out of her hangover to come see if I was dying (it wouldn't have been the first time). I would have given anything to go back to that land, where I was someone and had everything I had ever wanted.

Here, in South Park, I am a nobody with six girlfriends he only fucks because he's bored as shit and doesn't know what to do with himself. I am an almost-adult whose lush parents have decided to send him to free poor people tutoring so that they have some way of kicking me out of the house after I graduate, unlike my brother, who stuck around cooking meth in the basement until the police threw him in jail. Reality sucks ass, and I'm still pissed off about being shoved into it this morning, especially after that dream.

It gets worse when Cartman's voice, stringent as always, sounds from next to me, and I am brought back to the worn leather bus seat by the bus window, where I have sat every morning for the past four years. "Hey! Hey, guys! Guys! Guys!"

Apparently he hasn't really said something until he's said it three times in a row. "What, Cartman?"

Cartman starts a little- after a childhood of muffled words, people are still adjusting to the fact that, since I've removed my hood, my voice is actually audible now- but recovers within seconds. "Look at that girl." He shoves a sausage-shaped finger towards the back of the bus.

Turning where he is pointing, I see the brown-haired girl who has waited at the high school bus stop for four years, always standing apart from us, never saying anything. She's sitting in the last seat of the last row, and seems to be reading something: her head is bent and her hair is hanging over her face.

"Yeah, Cartman, she's in our grade. I think her name is Katelin." Kyle says.

I never knew she had a name.

"Haven't you ever noticed her before?" Stan asks.

"Not really," The fatass responds.

Kyle snickers. "Yeah, probably because she's in all the college level courses and you're retaking all the stuff from last year."

"That is not it, Jewboy!" Cartman shrieks, causing the bus driver (who was reprimanded for yelling at us too much) to affix him with a scowl that could curdle milk. He gets quiet immediately, then, a few seconds later, whispers, "I don't really pay attention to ugly chicks."

"Why do you think she's ugly?" Stan asks. It's a valid question. As far as I can remember, no one has ever seen the girl when her hair hasn't been hanging over her face like a weird sort of curtain or something. There's really no evidence to say if she's ugly or not.

"Well, why would she do that thing with her hair if she didn't have something awful to hide?" This is also a valid question. But why the hell is he asking it in the first place?

"Why are you even bringing this up?" I ask. "It's not really any of our business."

Cartman glares at me and his chins wobble, as they usually do whenever he has to explain his thinking to someone. "Because I want to know, that's why! After four years of this chick being in our class, hardly anyone has ever seen what she actually looks like, and I'm going to be the first one! We are going to meet by my locker to discuss how we're gonna do this."

Stan, Kyle, and I all glance at each other. Stan shrugs: we all know that once Cartman has gotten interested in something, it takes a huge amount of energy and force to get him to drop it. We might as well just ride this one out.

As Cartman suggested, we meet at his locker before school to discuss the girl. I'm pretty sure that none of us, considering the fact that we're not inches away from being certifiably psychotic, find it as imperative as he does to know whether or not she's really ugly, but we all find her interesting. I mean, this is someone who never talks to anyone, is generally recognized as a genius, and has never let anyone see her face. We're all a little curious.

"Okay, okay, guys, so I was thinking and I have this awesome idea."

We brace ourselves. Cartman's awesome ideas have only increased in their shock value over the years.

"I was thinking-"

All I see is a blur of blonde curls before I am almost bowled over by Bebe, who, as usual, is acting as though we haven't seen each other for nine years odd. "Hey, babe!" She gives me the typical Stevens greeting: an enormous, wet, very lipsticky kiss that is more like a suction than anything else. "I missed you, baby!"

"Missed you too, Bebe. How's it going?"

"Pretty good! I went to the mall with Wendy last night, and we got pink lemonade lip gloss-"

"Anyway," Cartman goes on, annoyed, "so here's my idea-"

"—and I put it on today before I saw you-"

"—we meet after school and-"

"—I was hoping you would taste it! I was-"

"—then we talk about-"

"-licking my lips over and over again yesterday and I swear it tastes just like pink lemonade!"

The morning bell rings. Thank god. I was getting a headache. Maybe it was from the pink lemonade.

First period is Statistics, with Stan, Kyle, Red, Rebecca, and Katelin, who sits in the back and takes notes quietly, her hair still hanging.

Red and Rebecca both sit four chairs away from me. Red keeps trying to make sexy faces at me during class, and Rebecca keeps passing me notes. Both of them think they have competition in the other.

Eventually, Red has licked her lips so many times that the teacher sends her to the nurse to get chapstick. One of Rebecca's notes ends up getting passed to Butters, and is caught by the teacher, who makes a very confused, slightly flattered Butters read the note aloud to a snickering class and a mortified Rebecca. Stan and Kyle can hardly contain themselves.

After second period Physics, the school is on break.

I hang out with the guys and talk about how pissed we are that Mr. Garrison, now a history instructor, is still teaching us in high school. Lisa Berger joins us, and comes bearing seven packages of Hostess cupcakes, which we split evenly (one for me, Stan, and Kyle, two for Lisa and Cartman). In exchange for the cakes, I kiss her once on the cheek. It's about all I can do with all the other girls in the hallway.

Lunch is corndogs, like we're seven.

Cartman has four, I have six because I am unlikely to have much for dinner, and Katelin, who I catch sight of after we have sat down, fills her tray with five bananas, six apples, seven corn dogs, and four brownies. For a moment, I wonder how she's able to eat so much, since she's pretty small, but then I see her slip all the bananas, apples, brownies, and five of the corndogs into the purse she's carrying. That's a really good idea. I wish boys could get away with carrying purses.

Cartman obviously wants to keep telling us his plan, but doesn't: Nicole sits on my lap all of lunch, eating most of my tater tots, talking about the dress she bought for homecoming, which is, by my estimates, four months away, presenting a problem: I must choose who I'm going with, since all my six girlfriends probably expect me to go with them.

Oh, the problems of me.

Gym class, the biggest joke ever thought up, is after lunch. Everyone, including the teacher, is too weighed down with cornmeal-covered hot dogs to move very much, so we have a "rest day". I sit on the bleachers with Henrietta, watch her smoke cigarette after cigarette, and listen to her talk about how much she despises everything in the world and how she wants to dig her eyes out so that she doesn't have to see it anymore. She invites me to a séance she's holding on Saturday, promising that there will be an Ouija board and several heartfelt attempts to resurrect Poe's spirit. I accept politely. I'm her ideal boyfriend: I don't talk, so she has more time to do it.

School ends. It couldn't have lasted longer.

I wait with the guys at the bus stop, even though I have to stay for the tutoring my parents are forcing me to go to, and am bemused by the fact that Cartman, ever unrelenting, is still talking about Katelin.

"Okay, so here's the deal: she has three classes at the college, right? And she walks to get there, right?"

"I don't know." I say.

"And then what happens is she comes back here to get her stuff, right?"

"I don't know." I say again. "How the hell do you know all this stuff?"

"Don't ask questions, Kenny, just observe the master. Oh, look, there she is!" And, sure enough, there is a small figure in a blue parka walking about two hundred feet away from us on the block, carrying a stack of books that must be a fourth of her height.

"Okay," Cartman continues, "the way I see it, there's no way that she's going to let us see what she looks like, so we're going to have to make her do it somehow."

"So what was your plan, then?" Stan asks.

"This." Cartman says, and sticks out his foot just as she is passing us. Katelin's ankle catches on his chubby one, and she hits the concrete with a soft thud. The pile of stuff she was carrying- Jane Eyre, a huge college-level calculus textbook, a copy of old English poetry we're studying in advanced English, a large blue binder (which splits open and sprays papers everywhere, which then blow all over the street), something called A Complete Dummy's Guide to Not Failing in a Quantum Mechanics Class, and a green banana- spill into dirty, slushy snow.

Everyone standing at the bus sign stops talking for a minute to stare at her, but then they go right back to whatever they were doing. Katelin doesn't move for a minute or two, but then she rolls herself over and sits up to look at the four of us. Her hair, which seems to be inclined to hang back from her face anyway, has bounced from her features to let Cartman see what he had wanted to.

She has a pale, oval face with big ears. She has a few freckles across her nose and cheeks. Her eyes are gorgeous, or at least the one I can see is. And we know why she hangs her hair: one side of her face is a mass of bruises and cuts, ranging from the top of her forehead to the line of her jaw. Her left eye is completely swollen shut and the skin around is discolored green and purple.

She doesn't yell at Cartman or smack him across the head or even glare at him, only fixes him- all of us- with a look that seems almost disappointed, then gets up, tries to brush the mud off her blue parka (only succeeding in smearing it), gathers up the wet books, picks up the papers she can reach, and walks into the school.

I feel sick.

Cartman is laughing. "Did you see that face? Holy shit, dude! No wonder she hides it! If the left side of my face looked like that, I'd do the same thing."

"Are you actually that much of a fucking retard, Cartman?" Stan snaps. "Just shut up. Leave her alone."

Cartman wipes his eyes with his thick fingers. "I mean, her papers spilling everywhere, that look on her face…just fucking, fucking priceless!"

"Maybe I should give you a black eye, and see how fucking funny you find it." Stan snarls.

Kyle looks genuinely confused. "Where did she get them? They look awful."

"I don't know, dude, but that was one of the best ideas I've had in a long time." Cartman starts laughing again.

I walk away, ignoring my friends as they call out after me. I'm not sure if I can handle much more of Cartman's idiocy without beating him up or something like that. It's time for tutoring to start, anyway.

The tutoring thing is actually really lame. It was started by Kyle's mom, who decided that it would be good for all the kids to have free school help. Made for students of all ages enrolled in South Park public schools, every tutor is someone near the age of the person being tutored. Kyle's little brother, Ike, now in the sixth grade, is helping a bunch of kids that look like they're in elementary school with some sort of early math. Henrietta is there, sitting sullenly as a pimply teen I don't know points to a piece of paper and talks, probably trying to get her to do some sort of English. As I watch, she digs her cigarette into the paper and flips him off.

Ever classy.

Mr. Garrison is sitting in a desk at the head of the room, reading the Karma Sutra, so I assume he's the guy who's supposed to be running everything. I walk up to him, and ask, "Hey, who am I with?"

He runs his finger down a paper spreadsheet, then points to the desk at the back corner of the room. Katelin is sitting there by herself, with the muddy stack of textbooks beside her.

Well, shit.

Thank you so much for reading! Please, please review! I need to know what you guys want to see happen next.