Age 15.

Ike worked at Tweek Bros. Coffee.

Tweek Tweak still worked there, was 'gettin' educated' in Denver but had his classes stacked Thu-Fri and lived at home, rest of the week. Was some 'medical arrangement' that Ike used to privately deem bogus until he observed Tweek tamping crushed lorazepam into the espresso basket muttering "It's too much fucking pressure" through chattering teeth while some persnickety asswipe waited for his almond milk cappuccino with Splenda, cardamom and a shot of cum or something, which was apparently the way Tweek dealt with all orders his shitty short-term couldn't stomach.

Karen McCormick was employed there too, eighteen by then but an utter workplace nullity, usually electing to remain cross-legged on the floor playing Angry Birds on Ike's cell, reaching one-handed over her head to shimmy bagels out the backside of the pastry display to eat between levels.

It was July and Ike wondered what Kyle was doing right then.

The doorbell chimed to announce Kenny McCormick in a pilling Neymar jersey Ike recognized as Kyle's—funny—and what looked liked a pair of striped boxers sans dick slit.

"Ike baby boy." Kenny pulled a palm over the back of Ike's neck and whacked his shoulder. "Karen here?"

"Yeah. Wouldn't know it though," Ike added, scowling sidelong at said girl, who paused level 57 and rammed a last rod of donut into her mouth before springing upon her brother.

"I missed you!" she giggled, expelling a frankly morbid avalanche of crumbs over Kenny's back. He wrapped his arms over the back of Karen's ribs and spun her, and Ike watched her long legs hover out across the floor. Karen was taller than Kenny, all graduated but still wore her grad cap which knocked against the side of Kenny's head—stated purpose: "for funsies" though Ike suspected it was more like she had something to prove to herself, or something. Ike snickered. Karen wasn't bad, actually kind of hot in that greasy, split-soled Converse way Kenny had been, but there was this animalism about her that Ike believed made no one wanna fuck her, except maybe Ruby Tucker because Ruby really liked dogs and cats. Karen was kind of needy too, had to be petted, walked and groomed, and Ruby took care of all of that which confused Ike because Ruby liked cock, conspicuously.

Kenny grinned at him over Karen's shoulder.

"How's Kyle?" Ike asked. He immediately flushed, scratched the back of his head sputtering. "I mean—sorry—didn't mean to ask that first thing off. What's up with you man?"

Kenny smiled, ignored this frantic addendum. "Doesn't like to keep you in the loop, does he?"

Kenny, for all his white-trash heritage-or-rather-lack-thereof, had that millionaire smile. Still didn't talk much but had that smile. Second only to Kyle, Kenny came home the least of all them. Hadn't gone to college and it was unclear what, exactly, he was up to in life but Ike knew he did a lot of couch surfing in questionable areas of the Bronx and drew commissioned conté nudes of upper-crust twenty-somethings humping their trust funds through Greenwich Village who thought it'd be neat to have their titties commemorated on chemically-distressed parchment in sanguine tones. Authored and illustrated a strip comic about a superkid named Mysterion serialized in some mag somewhere which Ike thought was fancy. However, most notable to Ike was the fact that Kenny crashed with Kyle like half the time.

"So is he coming home sometime?"

"Dunno. I mean I asked him before I left his place, but y'know he never gives it to you straight."

Ike smiled, tried not to show how excruciatingly he agreed. He watched Kenny pry Karen from him, finger her mousy fringe which he trimmed the once a year he was in town. "So Ike, you still play hockey?"

"Yeah."

"Piano?"

"Yeah."

"You better than Kyle now?"

"Hah. Never."

Kenny smiled. His brows peaked with sympathy and he cuffed Ike softly over the ear. "I'm gonna head out now you two. Karen, I'll see you at dinner. Try to help Ike out from time to time—"

Ike snorted as Karen flashed a thumbs up.

"—and tell Tweek I say hi."

Kenny was halfway out the door before Ike blurted, "Wait." Ike twisted his fingers under the counter and heard his knuckles crack. Karen twitched her nose, lifted a clawed hand to scratch the back of her ear. "You, um—you free after dinner?"

"Yeah dude." Kenny cocked his head. "Want me to pick you up?"

Ike nodded, gave a slight grin. Karen sniffed rather audibly, finally releasing from tension a painstakingly oriented digital fowl towards a fortress of apple-green piglets with a flick of her index finger.

—

"Huckleberry is a hillbilly flavor."

Kenny nodded to acknowledge the gripe but didn't respond, busy pouring Belvedere liberally over a bare centimeter of cranberry juice in the bottom of an orange Nalgene. Ike watched Kenny set down the vodka down next to the juice, eyed the strange composition, each vessel disparaging its neighbor: the elegant frosted-glass bottle pompous next to the Ocean Spray cranberry juice juvenile, the abraded water bottle just plain homely. The vodka, Kenny had snickered, was someone's airport Duty Free purchase misappropriated. Kenny swirled the container and sipped, sucked a breath through bared teeth before answering Ike.

"Not if you're in the city it isn't. Then it's hipster. Besides, you ordered it."

Ike flashed Kenny half a smile, gave his own milkshake a swirl, watched purple froth coat the waxed wall of the cup. The two of them perched on the rim of a cardioid basin in the skate park at the edge of town over a massive tricolor-gradient facade painted by Butters back when he still used Krylon primary-color triads. Ike found it funny Butters's tag was literally 'BUTTERS'—either because he was a closet belligerent or, in Ike's personal opinion, just that much of an artard—but still no one gave a shit, probably because Butters's graffiti allowed the mayor and Barbrady to fantasize that the place was worthy of clandestine desecration.

"So you really get by out there."

"There're all sorts of odd jobs you can do." Kenny shrugged swinging his feet, watching his heels bounce off the warped red U. "I told Butters to come out East. There's a lot to paint over there. Whole scenes—montages, like—in colors that, you know, the True Value here doesn't even stock."

"Yeah?"

"Mhm. Well anyway I assumed you wanted to ask about Kyle. I know he's not just, y'know, a big bro to you."

Ike inhaled huckleberry milkshake, choked into his sleeve. He took another drink, watery-eyed, feeling an uneasy burn spread across the back of his neck despite his insides iced cold.

"W-what do you mean?"

Kenny narrowed his eyes in consideration, pressed his lips. "I mean he's not just a friend to us either." He looked for a moment like he was going to elaborate but only shook his head smiling, and Ike felt the prickling at his nape subside. "Some people just mean more. It's ok, Ike. For some people to mean more."

"There's nothing special about him," Ike blurted, feeling the burn intensify again, flush to his face. He scowled, the cup releasing a little squelch as it caved under his fingers. "He's just a prick that happens to be good at a lot of stuff and thinks he's a superior human specimen."

A wan smile. "I'll toast to that last part."

"Yeah and you know," Ike continued, mashing the inside of his elbow with his thumb, "when I was twelve I ran away to go see him—funny 'cause that's really like the last time I even talked to him—the first year, when he got into a fight with my mom and didn't wanna come back for the holidays. Well he sent me back the next morning. On a seven o'clock flight."

"Heard, yeah."

"Even you came back that time."

"That's 'cause he gave me his plane tickets."

"Oh. Well anyway, it was terrible. The city I mean. Seeing him—seeing him was good. Was nice. But I don't know how you people live out there. I practically shit myself the first time through Penn Station. Why are you over there anyway? You're not even in school."

"Honestly? Because I didn't know where else to go, and he seemed like he did."

Ike snorted. "Some great inquisitive you are."

"There's a lot more out there you know. To distract yourself with. From, things."

"Things like your sorry self you mean."

"Well what the fuck else?"

Ike glowered at this candor even though he knew he ought to appreciate it, wrought the empty cup between his hands, the vessel in torsion emitting little cardboard dying sounds. He pitched it into the basin, stood to stalk back to Kenny's dad's truck parked crooked off the side of the road before Kenny caught his wrist. Ike yelped as he lost his balance, landing hard on his ass back next to Kenny who smiled dolefully.

"Don't go yet. Shouldn't walk out on people mad, Ike-y baby."

Ike twisted his wrist away, tried not to visibly fume. Kenny extended a hand and smoothed his thumb over Ike's brow. Ike didn't look like anyone else. Hooded eyes, sharply blue, one squinting scarcely more than the other under black brows that flared at the arches. Thin lips with an exaggerated bow. Pale face framed by a lick of hair like a breaking wave. Kenny mused that, even in a city of eight million, Ike would've been hard to miss.

"I want you to tell me what the fuck is Kyle thinking. Why does he refuse to come home. Why does he never pick up his phone and why does he act like people are trying to give him an anal probe when they're just trying find out how he is."

Kenny sighed. "I can't tell you that."

"Don't fucking huff at me Kenny, like I'm some little kid. You live with him—"

"I don't live with him I live near him."

"Ok but—"

"Here's the thing. I don't know anything about that kid. I mean, I can tell you—" Kenny gesticulated wildly, eyes rolled searching into his brains. "—I can tell you what day he does his laundry, what aftershave he uses, what he likes to drink and who he fucks, but I don't know what the hell goes on in his head." He looked Ike square in the eye. "We were never close, you know that right? I mean, in proximity, yes, but nothing more than that."

Ike ground his teeth. Kenny sighed through his nose, mixed another vodka with crandberry and drank it in one tip. He offered Ike the vodka, then the cranberry when he refused. Which he also refused.

"Don't feel so nasty Ike."

"…"

"Wanna see how you look right now? I could draw you. You look fine, but like you're feeling nasty."

"By the time you're done I'll have stopped looking nasty."

"Exactly. So just stop now. Feeling nasty sucks. Wanna know what it's like drawing nudes of young female aristocrats?"

"Not really," Ike grumbled.

"Well I'll tell you then. It's great, obviously. And in the two hours, maybe even two weeks—two months even, but that's kind of my max, depending on how much cash they wanna throw down—you get kind of obsessed with them. Like some of them are just beauties Ike—"

Ike rolled his eyes and Kenny knocked him on the shoulder, drinking straight out of the frosted birch-adorned bottle by then. The thing hung naturally from Kenny's fingers, wrist slightly broken under its glass weight, and Ike wondered at this understated familiarity.

"—no listen, listen. Like, you've got memorized every fucking mole and scratch on their body, the fucking angle that their tits meet their ribcage, and when they come in having just tripped on the stairs, or taken a different subway home from work, or eaten a shrimp salad instead of their usual chicken, you know man, you know."

"'Cause that's not fuckin' creepy or anything."

"And at the end of it all—'cause it's very intimate, in my humble-fuckin'-opinion at least—when they're tired of sitting naked on a barstool, they get up, throw some bills in your face and leave you sitting dirty-faced on the floor with your little crayons scattered everywhere. And you're like, 'But wait, I worked so hard on your portrait that when I blew my nose, my fucking snot had charcoal in it—like, you can't just leave like that.' Right?"

"Kenny, where the hell is this supposed to go."

"No—Ike—sit back down. God, I don't remember ever being so skittish, especially not when I was fifteen. Oh Ike, I just turned twenty-one by the way. But anyway—thanks Ike, we all got mad wasted—anyway, when the studio door slams shut behind their fine asses, it's a sad moment for you, the artist. 'Cause it echoes, you know. But when that little echo fades, you gotta just pack up your shit and leave too."

Ike raised an eyebrow. Horrible. Kenny dipped his head between his knees, rubbed furiously at his temples and scratched his left chest. The vodka was half-removed already.

"Sweet Jesus. I think you're gonna have to drive back Ike. I hope you know how to drive."

—

Ike didn't and after a few too many flirtations with the parkway guardrail he pulled Kenny's car off into the next roadside stop, palms slick and head pounding. The gravel lot was deserted, somber in blue dusk. Ike turned to regard Kenny in the passenger seat slumped temple to windowpane, grey lids awned. Ike scowled.

"Hey."

Kenny didn't stir. Ike suddenly flamed inside, reeled back and struck Kenny hard on the shoulder. He placed another on Kenny's collar, then one on his arm, feeling puerile in his hand-heeled hits but his chest too bursting to care. When Kenny, slapped from sleep, caught Ike's wrists in the air Ike snarled, fought like an animal as Kenny pulled him over the bench seat and wrapped him into his chest. Ike when he'd been subdued began to quake and Kenny held him as he screamed into yellow jersey fabric, sobbed from the pit of his stomach the way only a fifteen-year-old kid can. Kenny gripped him, bent over the boy with his own uncut pale hair falling like willow branches, until he quieted.

He wanted to breathe sweet words but found himself at loss, for such heartbreak he had never himself felt before.

—

LindaLee: Thank you for your kind words, you have absolutely warmed and encouraged me. It means everything to hear that the themes I've written about resonate with you as well.

Readers, please give me your opinions! I am particularly curious to know how Ike's character comes off to readers. Thanks all for your time. :)