Chapter Seven: Fascination.

Junior year. English class. I mentioned I used to sit next to Kyle Broflovski during this period. We never had any sort of confrontation in earlier years, mainly due to the fact that he hung around Stan Marsh and his bitch girlfriend during that time. Now having no sort of idea about him before, I worried Kyle would be very similar to the two he spent most of his time around. But much to my concern, he wasn't anything of the likes.

The second week of our junior year, we were assigned a partner project right off the start. Neither Stan nor Wendy were in this class, and having already sat next to each other, Kyle turned my way with a plea in his hazel eyes. Before even opening his mouth to ask, I nodded my head muttering a 'yes', and I could practically see Kyle exhaling the breath he was holding.

Our project was to do a research paper and presentation that we would present to the class about any topic we chose. It seemed like a pretty simple task overall, and it also came to my advantage to have Kyle as my partner. He's been known for overachieving homework assignments – I've been told such from Kenny on many occasions.

So as Kyle began to ramble on about different topics he thought about choosing, I sort of focused my attention on his facial features rather than completely focus on the words coming from his mouth. He was covered in freckles sort of like how Tweek was when the summer came around, but they were everywhere on Kyle. Hell, I even noticed a few scattered about his hands as he motioned them around while speaking. His eyes were hazel, but more on the grey side – similar to the shade of iron – and the more I focused on them, I noticed this ring of an ice blue colouring towards the pupils… this was around the time Kyle stopped speaking to give this confused look followed by asking:

"Are you even listening, Craig?"

I brought a hand to the fringe in the front of my hair (throughout the years, I started to let my straight-bangs grow out), and nodded. "Yeah, of course."

"Okay, because you looked kind of out of it."

"No I'm listening." It was a total lie, but I got Kyle to start talking again, and I focused my eyes on how there was a curl of his bright red hair hanging out of the green ushanka he was always seen wearing.

Kyle's been wearing the damned thing for as long as I can remember. And if I thought hard about it, I don't think I've ever seen all of his hair. That one curl was coming out from the side, beginning to come into his left eye and I got the urge to just pull it aside… but that'd be taking it too far. I mean, for all I knew Kyle was just as bad as Wendy in what he thought about me. So I left it hanging there, and it bothered me the whole period.

Eventually we agreed on the topic of agoraphobia – only because I mentioned it somewhere towards the end of the period, and also due to the fact my grandmother was known to have it. I figured that could an interesting point in the presentation in which I could elaborate a bit about a personal experience and Kyle totally agreed with the notion.

By the time the bell rung, I quickly jumped from my seat to head towards my free period (also known as study hall), but before I could go anywhere, Kyle grabbed my hand and began sprawling numbers across my skin in black pen.

"So we can reach each other outside of school."

I nodded my head with widened eyes, then started towards the classroom door clutching my hand to my chest. Finally getting out of the room, I came to find Tweek already waiting for me outside, and I smiled his way. But before we began walking to my class, he quickly pulled me close to him to plant a soft kiss upon my lips, and by the time I slightly pulled away in the corner of my eye I noticed Kyle standing off in the distance almost gawking at us. Already I could feel a blush forming on the rounds of my cheeks and that was around the time, I grabbed Tweek's arm with the hand that had the redhead's number sprawled across it.

"What's that?" Tweek asked, a bit of worry showing in his translucent eyes.

Shrugging, I let go of his arm, to casually walk beside him in the hall. "Kyle's number – we're working on a project together."

"I didn't know you two talked." He was gnawing on his bottom lip and I had to hold back the urge to tell him to stop.

"We don't. We just sort of sit next to each other and I guess none of his friends were in the class."

"That makes sense…"

And that was the end of that conversation.

When he met the doorway to my study hall class, Tweek nonchalantly waved goodbye then started back towards his cooking class. I just stood in the doorway for a moment, watching as he went down the hallway until turning the corner and disappearing. Sighing, I finally grasped the doorknob, to enter the classroom and began trekking to my table in the back of the room.

Already my cousin Red and her friend Powder were seated at the round table, whispering amongst themselves about whatever it was they liked to talk about. Running my chair across the carpet, I sat my messenger bag next to my feet, and slowly sat down myself. I couldn't help but look at my hand once more and notice that the numbers were slightly slanted and any number that created a rounded shape within itself had a simple dot within it. In fear that it would rub off throughout the day, I bent over to rustle about my bag grabbing a random marker and slip of paper, copying the numbers upon it.

"Whose number is that, Craig?"

I looked up to see Red and Powder staring at me with curiosity. With them sitting right next to each other, it was almost impossible to tell them apart thanks to the similar red hair and blue eyes, but with Red being my cousin it made the task a little bit easier.

Powder – whose name is actually Sally – was a girl in my grade I wasn't too familiar with. If she wasn't a friend of Red's I probably wouldn't have known who she was. She's that forgettable. With that being said, I've had no previous encounters with Powder (Just like Kyle), but having hung out with Red, I assumed she was a pretty decent human being.

I focused my attention directly on Red, who I assumed was the one that asked me, and shrugged.

"Not important."

"You're not cheating on Tweek are you?"

If I would have something in my mouth, no doubt would I have spat it out. Slamming both hands down on the table, I shook my head harshly.

"Jesus Christ, Red. No. Besides, I'm pretty sure no one would be interested in me considering I'm known as being a freak."

I watched as Powder licked the soft pink lipstick she has shimmering on her lips, then opened them to speak. "It's just because of the way you dress…" she stated, as though I didn't already know that.

Rolling my eyes, I sat back in my chair, crossing my arms over my chest as she continued speaking.

"Although, you look pretty normal today."

"Lightly noted, Powder."

It was true, that I did look normal as one would say. I wore an oversized black t-shirt, plain save for the bleach stains that were scattered about the collar from that one time I bleached my hair in the 9th grade, (That's a story to tell.) Paired with equally black skinny jeans with rather large holes in both knees, and old converse I stole from Tweek a few weeks back, this may have been the most socially acceptable I've dressed in a while.

"I was just giving a pretty reasonable expla -"

"Thank you, Powder!" I said a little louder in attempt to shut her up. The room was pretty quiet overall, and the loudness of my voice caused the teacher to glance back our way and give a really dirty look. But I ignored it, grabbing the marker I used earlier to write down Kyle's number, nonchalantly starting a lazy yet intricate pattern on my forearm while Red and Powder went back to whispering to each other.

The rest of the day didn't get any more exciting than that – well not until the end of the night.


"So basically it's like a mix of things?"

"Yeah... Like the fear of open spaces, going out in the unknown or going anywhere which may cause panic or embarrassment."

At the moment I was on the phone with Kyle at around midnight. The reason he called so late, I had no idea, but it wasn't like I was doing anything at the time anyways. I currently sat on my bed underneath practically every blanket I owned, with a notebook in lap scribbling down anything that came to mind. Right now it was naming any phobia I could think of at the moment in their technical name.

While Kyle started to read something that sounded like he was getting it from a WebMD website, I wrote down the most common arachnophobia then decided to interrupt Kyle's speaking.

"What are you afraid of?"

I could tell I caught him off guard but the abrupt way he stopped talking and sort of drawled out the last word he pronounced. "What?"

"Phobias – name one of yours, I'm making a list right now."

"Uh, okay. I guess the dark?"

"What's the technical name? You're by a computer, right?" I didn't even bother to what for a response. "Mind looking that up for me?"

There was a slight pause, shuffling around and I even heard the sound of Kyle clicking the keyboard on the other end.

"Uhm, Achluphobia?"

"Nice, do you mind spelling that?" And Kyle even went about doing such. Followed by asking:

"What's this for again? Shouldn't we be talking about the project?"

I sighed, tapping the end of my pen on my notebook. "We've got a whole month for that! I don't know anything about you."

I could hear Kyle laughing on the other end, he actually had a pretty nice laugh. "You're weird, but okay. We'll go back and forth – you're turn."

Luckily for me, I memorized just about every fear I could name about myself, and had the technical names already written on my paper. "All right… Isolophobia – fear of being alone."

"You're alone right now though, aren't you?"

"Not in a house full a people" I stated, adding a little bit of sarcasm at the end.

"Right, whatever." But he was laughing again when he said this. "Pnigophobia, fear of choking, need me to spell that?"

"Nope." I popped the 'p' at the end, bringing to try to spell the word because honestly, I didn't really know how to spell it, and after looking at the butchered letters, I shuffled the phone in hand laying it on the bed next to my thighs pressing the 'speaker' button. "You're on speaker now by the way, annnnd…"

"Wait why?" Kyle interrupted.

"Because my hand got tired."

"..Oh."

I smiled lightly. "Aviophobia."

"What's that?"

"Fear of flying – oh so original, right? I'm like the rest of the 1/3rd population that has it."

"Have you ever been on a plane?"

I shook my head, letting my fringe flap, but then I realized he couldn't see me. "No."

"Isn't that how majority of people are with that fear? They've never been on a plane."

"I think it has to do with the fact that I've ever done it, and being in the air is just a scary thought."

There was slight pause as though, Kyle didn't know to reply until finally coming up with another fear "Thantophobia, fear of – "

"Dying." I cut him off. That was one I knew only because of Kenny, I had a huge long conversation with him about it not too long ago. "Cleithrophobia; being locked in enclosed spaces." I was writing that one on the page, when I heard Kyle clearing his throat.

"Isn't that like Claustrophobia?"

"Eh, not really."

"What's the difference?"

Ignoring his question, I replied with:

" Trypophobia. Don't look it up."

"...Craig." I don't know why he said my name at the exact moment but I liked it.

"I'm serious, I didn't realize I had the phobia until I looked it up."

"I'm gonna do it."

"Wait, what? Kyle… don't."

"You mentioned it."

Sighing loudly, I almost threw the phone across the room, but then I remembered this was the house phone and I really wasn't in the mood for being bitched at by my father for possibly breaking it. There was a moment of complete silence except for the few sounds of Kyle's keyboard, it almost becoming a white noise. So by the time he finally spoke again, I nearly jumped off the bed.

"Hey, Craig… what are you wearing?"

I'm pretty sure I stopped breathing around then. "What?!" I gasped out.

"Fuck – ugh – I meant like how you wear pretty feminine clothes to school I was just curious what you wear to bed." Pause to let that sink in a few seconds. "Or, crap, I don't mean it like that. Aughh."

Unable to contain it, I threw back my head, hitting the wooden headboard with a 'thud' and laughing loudly.

"Kyle… Kyle, omigosh." I couldn't get out what I was trying to say. Somewhere in the middle of all my laughing, Kyle could be heard screaming at me, and from down the hall, the sound of my parent's bedroom door opening echoed throughout the hallway. Suddenly, my door opened with my father standing in plaid pajama pants and a simple white t-shirt, an ugly scowl plastered upon his features.

"What the fuck you still doin' up, Craig?"

That was when everything fell quiet. Quickly I tapped the 'speaker' button, sliding the phone a little bit under my pillow out of Thomas's sight.

"Sorry." I muttered.

"It's two in the mornin' boy, get your ass to sleep."

Bringing my knees close to my chest, I wrapped my arms around them because I was more than half sure he was staring at my shirt which happened to be one of Mom's I stole from her a few months back. The fabric as completely see-through, black silk with nothing underneath it. The sleeves hung off my shoulders exposing as much skin as pleased. Having committing the action, I realized it probably wasn't the best considering the shorts I were wearing used to belong to Red for when did aerobics and hardly covered my ass.

"Craig."

Cringing, I dare asked:

"Yes?"

"Get out of those pansy clothes."

And then he left the room without closing the door. I felt like screaming. But instead, I set my head on my knees, then went to blindly pull the house phone from underneath the pillow.

"Did you hear that?"

For a moment, there wasn't any sort of answer, until Kyle finally muttered a yes.

"Don't tell anyone."

And I hung up.


The next day I came to school wearing a t-shirt I stole from Tweek, it was a space camp shirt he got from a thrift store and I fell in love the moment he showed it to me. I wrestled him to get that shirt, which eventually lead to us kissing each other on the floor in his bedroom and engaging in a deep conversation about aliens. Before I went home that night, I made sure to sneak the shirt into my jacket then fled from his house when he asked me why it looked like I had breasts

The shirt was a soft sea foam green with faded lettering on the front, and a bunch of children's names I didn't know on the back. Somewhere in the middle of first showing me that shirt, I grabbed a black sharpie Tweek has lying randomly in his room, sprawling both our names in my broken cursive. I thought it was a cute touch to the shirt overall.

Wrapped around my waist was a black flannel with golden buttons, (totally the reason why I bought it) matched with a pair of black shorts that met my knees. It happened to also be one of those days I broke out my blue chullo from my elementary days and when I walked into English I noticed Kyle give me a confused look, so I simply flipped him off, taking my seat next to him.

"Haven't seen that thing in a while."

Shrugging, I turned to face the redhead, leaning in closer to him. "Sorry about last night."

"Oh, that – it's no problem."

So I stopped there, leaning back in my seat and crossing my arm over my chest. I could see Kyle staring at me in the corner of my brown eyes, just staring, like he was waiting for me to glance over at him.

"Space camp?"

"Long story."

I noticed this one freckle he had right above his top lip on the right, it was away from the rest of the freckles on his face, and for some odd reason I felt the urge to lick it.

"I feel like I don't understand you at all, Craig."

"Not too many do."

For the rest of the period, we didn't speak too much. Mainly because the teacher decided to lecture about how to write a proper research paper, as though junior's in high school didn't already know how to do so. During most of it, I tuned her out, doodling in my notebook and writing small verses to songs I had stuck in my head. At one point, Kyle grabbed my pen out of hand to ask if I was doing anything after school. That was around the time I began choking on the saliva in the back of my throat and had to leave the classroom to get a drink of water.

As I walked down the hallway, I couldn't help but wonder where this interest about me from Kyle came from, but I could only come to the conclusion that he probably asked if I was doing any after school for the sake of the project. Gathering my breath, I walked back to the class without even getting that drink of water, immediately telling Kyle 'no'.

And that was when he asked me to come over to his house.

I don't understand why I was reacting the way I was, because when I read the words on the paper, I screamed. Like a little squeak that resembled a mouse.

Smooth.

In return he gave me an odd look, and I quickly nodded my head at him. So that was when he continued writing on my paper, giving me his address. As I watched him carefully write each letter out, I noticed that Kyle wrote in capitalized letters - and that bothered me.

Around the time that the bell rung, I grabbed my messenger bag in the same swift motion as I stood up, exiting before anyone could. Tweek wasn't anywhere in sight yet, and I took that to my advantage of running to the restroom to hide for my next period class.

Taking the furthest stall from the door and locking it, I sunk down by the wall not anywhere near the toilet, taking a black pen out and beginning to write questions on my arm. I did this for the entire 45 minutes I had study hall until I couldn't put another single letter on my arm. It was a mess, and I'm surprised that later on in the day I could even read it. But after I felt content enough about it, I untied the flannel from my waist to slip on so that I could easily hide the words, and as soon as the bell rung, I headed straight to lunch.


Somehow during the rest of the school day the pen on my arm began to rub off, so when it got to around the time Kyle and I had worked an hour on the project we took a break. Casually, I slipped my flannel off to glance down at my arm only to notice half of the words running into each other due to the small space I was working on and also majority of them were smeared somehow. Groaning loudly, I leaned my head back so it hit the wall behind me, causing Kyle to peer down, then ask what the hell it was I wrote.

"A questionnaire of sorts. I don't know, I figured we would have down time."

"When'd you find the time to do that?"

"I skipped my study hall period – not like I would have been done anything in there anyway."

That was around the time we got into the conversation of how I found it so easy to skip classes. I found it easier to talk to Kyle by the second. We've only been working on this project, but it seems like we've been talking to each other for much longer than that.

Before we knew it, hours passed, and we were still engrossed in whatever it was that could come to mind at this point. We were both sprawled across his bed – him lying on his back staring up towards the ceiling, while I laid on my stomach, head cradled by my arms which also held my flannel as a pillow, and looking directly at Kyle.

With each word that spilled from his mouth, I couldn't help but focus majority of my attention on that damned freckle that resided next to his upper lip. I didn't even notice that I was beginning to gravitate closer towards him until I found myself lifting myself up on my arms to hover over his face.

His hazel eyes shifted from the ceiling to the brown hues to mine, worry quick to spread upon his features, but if I looked hard enough I sensed a hint of mischief.

As I stared harder at that one freckle, I quickly found myself lowering my face until my chapped lips met his and in moment we were kissing. Not a simple kiss like Tweek and I usually shared. The moment our lips touched, Kyle was prying mine open immediately running his tongue against my own.

That was around the time I freaked, pulling away almost as soon as it happened and gathering my flannel off the bed.

"I – I'm sorry." I stammered. "I can't do this. I can't."

My hands were going crazy, running harshly through my fringe not quite sure what else to do. Taking one last glance at Kyle, I saw just how confused he was himself. He slowly sat up, eyes not once leaving my figure.

"Craig…"

I couldn't listen to this. Wrapping my flannel around my waist, I walked towards the door, hand upon the handle, not bothering to hear what it was Kyle was about to say.

"I can't fucking do this!" I yelled. "I'm sorry Kyle."

Then I left as fast as I could, staggering down the staircase and just hoping that I could get to Tweek's house as quickly as possible.


When I reached Tweek's house which just so happened to be only a few blocks away from Kyle's I was panting like crazy, banging harshly on the wooden door until Mrs. Tweak came to answer with a worried expression spread upon her features. She was dressed in cotton pajama bottoms that had small coffee cups scattered about the fabric, and I'm pretty sure if I hadn't been panicking (and out of breath) at the moment, I would have complimented them just to see the blush that would arise on her cheeks.

I waved at her, attempting to get out a 'hi' which sounded more like I was gasping for breath, then she stepped to the side, allowing me to pass through. As soon as I entered the house, I took off towards the staircase, taking two steps at a time, and upon reaching Tweek's bedroom, I slammed into the wood, immediately regretting it moments later. Grasping the doorknob, I shoved the door open, slightly smiling when I saw Tweek lying in bed, nonchalantly listening to music.

"Tweek I'm so sorry." But it came out unable to even understand half the words I said.

Jumping up from his bed, the blonde walked over to me, grabbing my hand to pull me further into the space, closing the door behind us.

"What are you talking about?" He asked, worry in his eyes. "Why the hell are so sweaty?"

Sitting down his bed, I completely collapsed, taking off the practically all of my clothing except for the plain black boxers I wore and a white wife-beater. I could tell Tweek was slightly uncomfortable watching me strip on his bed, by the way he couldn't seem to find a spot in the room to set his eyes, but I didn't care. I was hot.

"I ran all the way here from Kyle's"

"Why?"

"Because - because I did something I shouldn't have and flipped."

"...What'd you do?"

This was the moment I wish I could avoid. Like, thinking back to it now, I regret half of the shit I did that night, because if I hadn't kissed Kyle, then I wouldn't have needed to tell Tweek and then he wouldn't have done the things he ends up doing in weeks to come, and everything would just be fucking peachy. But no, I fucked up big time and there was no reversing it. So as explained each word to the blonde before me of the previous events, eventually tears struck my eyes and there was no stopping them as soon it happened. As I openly cried to Tweek, he just watched me, until everything I said was done and we just sat in silence.

If there was anything I could to make the situation less awkward. Adjusting my wife beater on my figure, I focused my sight on the carpet of Tweek's room, refusing to back at him until he spoke.

"I forgive you."

Right at that second, I felt like screaming as loud as I could. Scream obscenities that would cause Tweek's mom to walk into the room to ask me to leave. Every emotion within bubbled in my chest, until I just could not take it anymore. Standing up, I slowly paced the room, thinking a thousand thoughts per minute. It wasn't until I walked over to the furthest wall away from Tweek – screamed – then punched it as hard as I could.