[Disclaimer: I do not own South Park or any of its characters...unfortunately :) This story is purely for entertainment purposes.]
A/N: Yet again, it's only been a few days since I've updated...but I was too excited about this chapter to contain myself! There's only one more chapter left, so be on the lookout for that over the next week.
Rrrriiiinnngggg. The twelve-o'clock bell chimes, and that means one thing at South Park High: lunch time. I hustle out of my fourth-period English class so I can check my phone.
No texts from Stan.
It's weird; he hasn't texted me all day. Last night, we got an email from our history teacher saying that class was cancelled today, so Stan and I planned to meet up in the library during third-period to study together. I waited in the library, texted him, and even went looking for him, but he never showed up.
Hopefully he's okay.
As I head towards the cafeteria to look for him, I see something that nearly takes my breath away.
Leaning against the lockers, right in front of me, are Bebe and Kenny, full-on making out. In front of everyone.
"Bebe?"
They both stop and look at me sheepishly. "Hi, Wendy," Kenny says with a grin. Before I can even open my mouth, he sees Cartman walk by and lifts his chin in greeting. "I should probably get going. See you later, babe." He kisses her on the cheek, winks at me, and walks off with his friend.
I corner Bebe before she can get away. "Bebe," I whisper, "are you and Kenny dating now?"
She smiles broadly. "Yeah, and it's all thanks to you. I thought about our conversation on the hill yesterday, and I realized that you're right: I really like Kenny, and he seems to like me, so why shouldn't we be together?"
"And?"
"Well, last night, after the sled race, we were hanging out by Stark's, fooling around in his dad's pickup truck—"
"Ugh, Bebe, I don't need to know about that."
"Well, I told him how I feel about him, and he told me that he feels the same way about me! And he asked if I wanted to go with him to Token's party, like, as a date."
Fuck. "Um, you do remember that you're going to that party with Craig, right?"
Bebe waves her hand dismissively. "Don't worry, Wenz, I got you. I broke off the date with Craig this morning before homeroom."
"How did he take it?" I ask nervously.
"Fine," she says with a shrug. "He looked a little disappointed, I guess, but he didn't flip out. I mean, you know Craig. He's always just kind of…meh about everything."
"Good." I let out a big sigh of relief. "As long as he isn't pissed off—"
"Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's fine. Anyway, enough about you; aren't you happy about me and Kenny?"
Oh, right. "Girl, of course I am!" I hug her tightly. "You guys are gonna be so cute together. I can't wait to see South Park's best-looking couple out in the open for the first time at the party tomorrow."
Her eyes widen. "Speaking of which, I need to ask Kenny what he's planning on wearing! Whatever it is, it can't clash with my dress!" She blows me a kiss and chases down the hallway after her man.
Jesus Christ. Things move fast around here.
When I get to the cafeteria, I scan the room and don't see Stan. However, I spot Kyle sitting with some other guys from the basketball team. He's sure to know where Stan is. I make my way over there and put my tray on the table across from his—and right next to Clyde's.
I'm about to speak to Kyle, but Clyde is in the middle of a rant about donuts. "You guys need to try this donut sometime," he asserts, waving around a donut covered in powdered sugar. "I swear, Tweek's dad makes the best donuts in town."
Oblivious to his proximity to me, he accidentally whacks me with the donut, sprinkling the top of my head with a dusting of sugar. "Hey, watch it!" I exclaim, vigorously shaking sugar out of my hair.
"Jesus, calm down!" Clyde moves the donut away from me with raised eyebrows. "Someone's on the rag," he mutters.
"Hey!" Kyle barks at him. "Don't talk shit about Stan's girlfriend, dude. Not cool."
"Well, unfortunately for you, you're not the boss of me," Clyde says. "And neither is your best buddy Stan." He smirks and takes a big bite of the donut. It oozes purple jelly.
I freeze.
Purple.
Fucking.
Jelly.
"Is that grape jelly, Clyde?" I ask stiffly.
He nods, his cheeks bulging with jelly and dough. "Tweek's dad has a secret grape jelly recipe, and it's amazing. He only puts it in the donuts."
My mind flashes back to me, sitting in the Tweek Bros. bathroom, fingering the grape jelly stains on the cut-up magazine pages.
"Is that what you always get at Tweek Bros.?" I ask, my voice almost a whisper.
"Well, I plan on it. It's so good."
I feel the blood draining from my face. Kyle was right. Clyde wrote the letter. It was Clyde Donovan the whole time.
I'm so shocked that I'm barely aware of Kyle staring at me, concerned. "Are you okay, Wendy? You look a little pale."
"I'm fine," I respond, smiling weakly. I desperately want to tell him that I just caught Clyde red—er, purple-handed, but I can't do it here, front of everybody. "Actually, Kyle, can I talk to you for a second? In private?"
"Sure," he says, standing up. "Let's go to the hallway."
I follow him out of the caf, amidst a chorus of oooh's from the other guys at the table. He flips them off and keeps walking out.
Once we're alone in the hallway, he turns to me with a look of confusion. "What's wrong, Wendy?"
"Nothing." I pick at my nails. "I just… I think Clyde wrote me the letter."
Kyle's eyes nearly bulge out of his skull. "Are you serious? How do you know?"
I tell him all about the magazine I found at Tweek Bros.—how it was issued on Sunday, how it had a bunch of letters and words cut out, and how it had grape jelly stains on all the pages with cut-outs.
"So," I say, sighing deeply, "it must be Clyde. You were right yesterday, so I guess that means you win our little contest." I try to say it in a congratulatory tone, but it comes out sounding strangled. No matter how hard I try, I can't seem to get the disappointment out of my voice.
But why? Am I disappointed that it's Clyde…or that it isn't someone else?
Instead of being excited that he won, Kyle starts looking a little pale himself. "Wendy… It's not Clyde."
"What do you mean?"
He looks down at his hands, as if they're the most interesting things in the world. "Clyde got the donut from Cartman."
All of a sudden, everything around me slows down. I feel like I'm underwater. "What?"
"Well, Cartman and Clyde had agreed that whoever lost the sled race had to buy the winning team a dozen pastries from Tweek Bros. And since Clyde's team won, Cartman brought them a box of pastries this morning. Clyde took a couple of the donuts off of him during homeroom."
"But…that doesn't mean anything!" I sputter, almost laughing at my revelation. God, I'm turning into a psycho. "We know Clyde likes the donuts anyway, so maybe he gets them when he goes to Tweek Bros. Besides, Cartman always gets a bear claw, right?"
"Yeah. But when they're out of plain bear claws, he gets a jelly donut."
"Okay, but it could still be Clyde, right? He really likes that donut. So we don't know for sure it wasn't him."
Kyle places his hand on my shoulder and squeezes it lightly. "Wendy, Clyde has never bought a donut from Tweek Bros. When he ate the first donut during homeroom, he said he was so excited because it was his first time trying it. So…Clyde couldn't have written the letter. But it could've been Cartman." I can't make eye contact with him. "I'm sorry, Wendy. I hope for your sake that it's not fucking Cartman."
My heart is thumping so hard, I'm afraid Kyle will hear it. He said exactly what I was scared of hearing, but also what I thought all along.
Kyle shrugs. "But hey, there's still hope that it's not someone so shitty. Those donuts are popular, so it could still be tons of people. Like Jimmy, or Jason… But not Token or Tweek, we know that."
That's when I remember that today is Friday, the deadline I gave Tweek for putting the surveillance footage in my locker. Today I can figure out once and for all who wrote this goddamn letter.
I finally look up at Kyle. "Hey, thanks for the talk. I just really need to go right now." Without another word, I speed off down the hallway.
"Hey, what about your lunch?" he calls out after me. I ignore him. I can't stand not knowing anymore. I need to get to my locker, now.
…
There it is, lying on top of my binders, just small enough to fit through the slats in the door of my locker: a USB drive. I grab the drive and my laptop out of my locker, stuff them into my backpack, slam the door shut with a resounding bang, and head for the girls' bathroom.
I open the door to the restroom slowly, peering around to see if anyone else is in there.
Nope.
I dash into a stall and pull out my laptop, opening it up and sticking in the USB drive. There's a video file on the drive, labeled "CCTV footage for FBI." I almost chuckle at Tweek's naiveté, but I'm in no mood for laughter.
I move the file to my desktop. As I wait for it to load, I hear some weird noises from the room next door. The boys' bathroom.
"Come on, Kyle! Pick up the fucking phone!"
It's Stan. His voice sounds hoarse and warbled.
"Fuck!" Then a loud thud.
Snapping my laptop shut, I quickly put everything back in my bag and hurry out of the girls' bathroom. When I reach the door of the boys' room, I hesitantly knock. "Stan? It's me. Can I come in?"
All I hear is a muffled groan.
I push open the door. Stan is sitting on the floor, head down, arms wrapped around his knees. I start moving towards him, but he looks up at me with a look of pure disgust. "Don't you come near me."
I stop dead in my tracks. "Stan, what's wrong—"
"What's wrong? You want to know what's wrong?" He wipes his face and stands up. "My perfect, loving girlfriend Wendy Testaburger wants to know what's wrong with her stupid, asshole of a boyfriend, huh? Her complete idiot boyfriend—"
I grab his arms. "Stan! What are you talking about?"
"Don't act all innocent with me," he snorts, freeing himself from my grasp. "I'm not buying it. I know what you've been doing."
"I don't know what you're talking about! Stan, tell me, please!" Tears well up in my eyes as I try to reason with him. His face remains hardened.
As digs into his pocket, something in my brain clicks. "Bebe…" I murmur.
He looks up at me, confusion written all over his face. "What?"
"Is this about Cartman?" I whisper, drawing closer. "I don't know what Kenny told you, but it's not—"
Stan's eyes grow wide like saucers, and he freezes. "You're fucking Cartman, too?"
"No!" I exclaim, a little too loudly.
Wait.
Too?
"Answer me, Wendy," he demands. "Are you fucking Cartman, too?"
"I'm not fucking anyone!" I cry, my voice cracking in desperation.
"Ohhhh, I see. You're not fucking anyone. So this is isn't from anyone, right?" He whips out his phone and shoves it in my face. Staring right at me is the picture of my underwear on Craig's carpet.
I laugh.
It wasn't intentional, I swear. It just…came out.
Stan looks even more disgusted.
I take the phone from his hands. "Don't you see? This is all a big misunderstanding."
His brow furrows and he steps back. "Huh?"
"It's a funny story. Not ha-ha funny, more like…weird funny. Craig stole my underwear— Actually, Kenny stole my underwear—"
"Kenny stole your underwear?" he says in disbelief.
"Yeah. But it started when he broke into my locker and took my textbook, my physics textbook. He needed an excuse to get into my house so he could take my underwear."
Stan pinches the bridge of his nose. "Then how did Craig get your underwear?"
"Well, Craig wouldn't sell Kenny any weed if Kenny didn't do him this favor."
"But what did he want with your fucking underwear?" I can practically see the steam coming out of Stan's ears.
"He wanted to blackmail me into getting him a date with Bebe—"
Stan reaches over and grabs his phone out of my hand. "I'm not buying your shit, Wendy. Just admit that you're sleeping with Craig! He told me everything!"
"What did he tell you?" I mumble, trying desperately to hold back tears, and failing.
"Oh, he told me so much." Stan scrolls through his phone. "Just pages and pages of texts about how he touched you, and how you touched him, and how you've been doing it in the fucking library every time you tell me that you're studying."
"Stan, he's lying!"
"Don't bullshit me!" he screams. His voice reverberates throughout the room, filling the air with a heaviness that makes me want to choke. He stuffs his phone back in his pocket and starts pacing the room. "I could tell you've been acting weird lately, but I just assumed you were stressed about school or something. I never thought in a million years that you were…fucking…Craig…"
I try once more to hold him. "Stan, please, why don't you believe me?"
"Why would Craig make up this shit, huh? Why would he tell me all this? And he knows everything about you, Wendy. He knows that your left nipple is just a little uneven. He knows that your back arches when you're kissed behind your ears. He even knows about the heart-shaped freckle on your ass. How would he know that, Wendy? How would he know that if he hadn't seen your ass?"
Bebe. My vision goes cloudy, as I imagine Bebe and Kenny lying in the bed of Kenny's pickup truck on winter nights, as she shares stories and secrets I've told her over a lifetime of sleepovers.
My head is throbbing.
"Stan, please, I can explain—"
"And to think, I was feeling guilty. I was feeling like a complete douchebag, when all this time you weren't any fucking better than I was!"
My chest tightens. "What?" I breathe, my voice small and mousy.
He ignores me. "All this time, I was worried about hurting you, because I thought you loved me so much, and I couldn't stand the thought of making you suffer…"
I finally manage to grab him and stop his pacing. My eyes meet his. Suddenly, he doesn't look furious; he just looks miserable. "Stan," I whisper, "I don't understand."
I watch as his eyes darken, and his lips twist into a nasty snarl. "Hmm, you don't understand? Wow, for an A-student, you're a pretty dumb bitch." He spits out the last word, but his cheeks turn scarlet, betraying his discomfort with the word.
Then he walks away from me, turning to look out the window.
"Wendy… Kyle and I are fucking."
And there it is.
"You know," he says, his back still turned to me, "I wasn't going to say anything until after you and I had sex on Saturday. Kyle kept bugging me and bugging me to tell you as soon as we started this whole thing, but I had to wait. I know you've always wanted to lose your virginity to me, and I was going to make that happen for you."
Please shut up please shut up please shut up.
"And then after that, I just needed to find the best time to tell you about me and Kyle. Not there would ever be a good time. I didn't know how I would ever be able to tell you without making you hate me. That was my worst fear, that you would hate me."
I stand there in silence. I want to throw something at him. I want to hit him. I want to do something to him, anything, that will make my mind stop whirring and my body stop shaking.
But I don't. Because I still love him.
I just stare out the window. The sky is gray, the kind of gray that stretches out in every direction for miles, making you feel like there can't possibly be an end, a silver lining, anywhere in the world.
"We can make this work," I hear myself saying, my lip quivering. "I can forgive you."
Stan makes a small noise, somewhere between a chuckle and a sob. "Maybe you can. But I can't…"
"Stan…"
He turns around. His eyes are bloodshot. "I can't forgive myself." He grabs his backpack and walks out.
I don't follow him. I just keep staring out the window.
Kyle and I are fucking.
I should have seen it coming.
I thought you loved me so much.
I do.
I drop down to the floor, the word "bitch" still ringing in my ears. The more I hear it, the more my sadness turns to fury. Hot, angry tears start streaming down my face.
He was usingme. He was using Kyle.
I can't forgive myself.
That's when I realize something: I can't forgive Stan, either.
I close my eyes and lean my head back against the cold metal door of the stall. This is it. There's no coming back from this. For the first time in years, I'm alone.
Suddenly, my body jolts up.
I'm alone. That means…I'm free.
As if on autopilot, my body moves towards the stalls. I sit down on a toilet and close the door carefully behind me. I pull out my laptop and open the video file.
The footage is grainy, but I can make out details in the picture: faces of customers, furniture, paintings on the wall. I drag the video scrubber forward until I finally see someone I recognize.
My tongue tastes something salty on my lips. I reach up to touch my cheek and feel beads of sweat trickling down my face.
I stare at the grainy black and white figure on the screen in front of me. I watch him walk up to the counter and point to the pastry case. I watch him get angry and start yelling at the cashier. I watch him throw up his hands and point back at the pastry case. I watch the cashier hand him a plate with something round, the only round thing on the menu at Tweek Bros.: a donut. I watch the figure pay for the donut and sit down at a table. I watch him scarf it down quickly. I watch him walk over to the coffee table, pick up a magazine, and head for the bathroom. When he comes out a few minutes later, he puts the magazine back on the table.
As soon as he leaves the coffee shop, I drag the scrubber back, and watch the whole thing all over again, unable to stop watching the footage.
Unable to stop watching him.
Unable to stop watching Eric fucking Cartman.
Welp, there it is. You finally know the truth. Did you see all that stuff coming? Only part of it? Let me know in the review section!
But hey, this story hasn't wrapped up just yet. Are Stan and Wendy seriously breaking up for good, or will someone come crawling back? Will Wendy confront Cartman about the love letter? Tune in next time to find out all this, AND MORE!
xoxo,
FonicsMonkey
