Stan and Kyle got together and apparently decided the Clyde thing had depressed me horribly, so they took me out on Sunday to 'cheer me up.' I know they mean well - they always mean well, it's infuriating - but things are actually going my way for once.

When Tweek demolished the projector, Craig came running over and chewed him out while he crawled out of the wreckage with Bebe's assistance. Then Token swooped in out of nowhere and came to Tweek's defense, because that's just what he does. Craig and Token got into a fight and, well... Craig spends all of his free time in dark movie theaters, hiding from the sun and muscle-building activities. And Token is black.

So while I hung back, watching Token beat Craig up and Bebe help a frantic Tweek get his helmet off his head, Henrietta wandered over. It was the first time she'd come up to me in two years, so I'd been a little flustered and hadn't been as suave with her as I would have liked.

I offered my sympathies that her sculpture had been destroyed, but she'd just blown a smoke ring and said, "My sculpture represented life. Destroying it was a fitting end."

Then she commented that she'd seen Craig's project before Tweek plowed into it, and that kissing another boy was very anti-conformist, and that maybe she'd been wrong about me after all.

So kissing Clyde was completely worth it, even though it was totally disgusting and I'm never kissing another dude again as long as I live. Er. Well, you know what I mean. And I don't need any cheering up, because Craig's got a bloody lip, his camera is broken, and Henrietta is finally speaking to me again. But Stan and Kyle apparently can't get that through their heads.

They kidnapped me while I was walking back from church with Gary and his family (Whose sister is totally smoking, by the way. It's too bad she doesn't believe in premarital sex.) and dragged me off to Tweek Bros. Coffee, where they mocked modern poetry. Henrietta, Jason, Brandon, and Andrew were there - I guess Benny's finally kicked them out. Stan and Kyle wouldn't let me go talk to them, though. Kyle sat on my legs so that I couldn't stand up, in fact. They said the goth kids were enablers. And, okay, they are, but I like them.

It's sort of a depressing thought, but I don't think I actually have anything in common with Stan and Kyle, aside from history. They're so, I dunno... happy. They always want to talk about their feelings and learn life lessons and gay shit like that. They're pretty oblivious, too. Careless with all their caring, I guess. They weren't there for me when I was really down. No one was, except Henrietta.

Mrs. Tweek finally kicked them out for causing a disturbance during poetry hour, and they dragged me down to the 8-10 instead. They went to the back and shot straw wrappers at each other while I headed for the pastry shelf. They were out of Strawberry Cinnamon Buns (it pains me to write that sentence) so I got a doughnut. One of those powdered sugar ones that make you look like a crack addict if you eat it. I'd hardly paid for it when Stan and Kyle got kicked out again, this time for wasting straws.

They finally dragged me down to the bookstore, where Kyle declared that all American literature from To Kill a Mocking Bird to Gone With the Wind as 'dead to me.' Stan shifted through the turned-into-a-movie section and said the movie version of Forest Gump had had a stronger message. I'd always preferred the book, myself. I always felt it was more realistic that he didn't end up with Jenny.

I don't really read much anymore. I used to be into Poe and Tim O'Brien, but Mom asked me to stop bringing home books about death when Kevin died. Henrietta, Jason, Brandon, and Andrew are all sort of obsessed with Poe, so I lent them my books and when I left the group I just sort of... gave up on that kind of thing.

Mole keeps trying to push Douglas Adams, Terry Pratchett, and Grant Naylor on me, though. He says British humor is the only worthwhile humor.

The three of us meandered over the Harlequin section, where Stan and Kyle immediately began snickering. The covers nearly had Stan prone on the floor, crippled by laughter, and Kyle commented that all Harlequin writers probably chose their titles with a random generator that combined the words 'throbbing,' 'passion,' 'hot,' and some male archetype. He pulled out The Throbbing Passion of the Cowboy in the Hot Prairie Night to prove his point, and he and Stan giggled like eight-year-olds.

I was kind of annoyed, because Harlequin novels were my masturbation material before I was old enough to get my hands on any good porn. I used to get off to 'the wanton mistress's ample, heaving bodice...' Kyle is convinced that they're all like Valley of the Penises, though.

Kyle finally dragged himself away from Stan to ask me if I was feeling any better, and I asked him why they were so sure I needed cheering up. He said some stuff about perpetuating rumors, blah blah blah, and then he said people were going to talk because I already spent so much time with that queer kid, Chris.

So I said, "Hold up. Mole isn't gay."

Kyle gave me this look like I was the oblivious, naive one who always got suckered into magicians and psychics and talking whales and pointed out that Mole didn't like girls. And I said, well, yeah, but he doesn't like guys, either.

Then Stan knocked over the new paperback display, and he and Kyle got kicked out again. I hung back and watched that security-guard/cop-for-hire spray them in the face with pepper spray and tell them to 'move along, sirs.' Kyle and Stan don't usually get kicked out of three places in one day. I guess they're making up the time they lost when they were having their bitchfest.

It's sort of aggravating that Stan drops me the moment he and Kyle make up, then turns around, decides I'm depressed, and tries to cheer me up. I can't say it really bothers me that he'd rather hang out with other people than me, though - I'd rather hang out with other people than him.

I wandered around and stumbled across none other than Mole, hogging the couch in the children's section from the snot-nosed five-year-olds (all of which were standing back and watching him all a group of resentful vultures) and reading Through the Looking-Glass. He was raving about it last week, in between writing vulgar suggestions on Stan's calculator and calling him a honky. He was going on about "The Walrus and the Carpenter" in particular, and saying it was a poem about the evils of religion.

Mole can make even the most mundane things into an anti-religious statement. It's like a very useless superpower.

I made him move his boots off so that I could sit down, and then I asked him what he was doing in the bookstore. He said he'd skipped out on church again and now he was hiding from his parents, who were searching the graveyard for him, where they were convinced he was sacrificing cats on fresh graves with the rest of the occult.

People - Mole's parents in particular, but it's everyone, really - have a bad opinion of him. Even I did; up until two years ago he was just that weird kid who carried around a shovel and beat Craig's office record because he was always trying to make off with a desk. But whenever we hang out, it's always at the playground or Tweek Bros. Coffee or his house. The worst thing we do together is smoke cigarettes outside the Museum of Tolerance and laugh when that shrew woman who works (practically lives) there has a conniption.

I lounged on the couch for a while and Mole read me "Jabberwocky," and then one of the more bitter snot-nosed five-year-olds tipped a display over on me. It crushed me and killed me quite efficiently, and I wound up in heaven even though I haven't officially converted yet. I guess intentions really do count in the afterlife.

I came back this morning and missed first period - english. The same subject Bebe-the-prude-Stevens is coming over to tutor me in in, oh, about an hour. I guess I should clean up my room or something.