Well, as of last Wednesday, I am officially fifteen years old. IT'S EXCITING 8D
XDD my party was great. We watched Beetlejuice and School of Rock and The Cable Guy, and we ate pizza and cheese curls LMAO. In the presents department…uhh…I got an Mp3 player (not an iPod, but an iRiver) so I am no longer ghetto-fabulous, The Complete Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Holes, "Flood" by They Might Be Giants, a CD by Sensation White (which is this really great techno band), a pop-up version of Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky poem, a few drawings by my fabulous friend Mary, a 12" figurine of an Alien (squee!), a handmade whistle that doesn't work too well but is still awesome, roughly $105, a Franz Ferdinand shirt, a Jack Skellington pillow, an authentic Caution: Wet Floor sign (don't ask), a furry purple and black scarf, "Major Payne", and an unsharpened light blue colored pencil. XD
Sad chapter last time, I'm sorry. But this is a sad story! This one's…I guess…a tad bit more upbeat…though slightly shorter…I DUNNO XP Why don't you just read it and find out for yourself, kay? Meh :D
GOD THERE IS SO MUCH MORE TO COME! You guys don't know what you're missing. XDD
Chapter Ten
The Mole did not come to Gregory's side the night before he left, and Gregory suppressed tears for an hour before he cracked, ripping his way out of his own bed and trudging over to Mole's. The French boy, who had apparently not expected this turn of events, gasped audibly when Gregory pressed into him and urged him to turn around. The tearful blue eyes dug into the green ones, very angry and upset.
"Why didn't you come?" Gregory demanded, wiping his eyes. "This is probably the last time we'll ever see each other…and you just stay in bed?" He didn't give The Mole a chance to respond before he noodled his way under the covers and clung to his best friend's nightshirt, kissing the scarred chest through the fabric. "…I'm going to miss you desperately, Mole, and I want to have a chance to remember…everything…"
"Gregory…'ush…you'll wake our muzars—"
Gregory glared at him. "Oh, fuck that!" he hissed in his sharp British voice, surprising The Mole into silence. The French boy made a very irritated face at his best friend, and Gregory thought he looked a little pained, like he was hurting on the inside for some reason other than the fact that he would be leaving the next day.
"…Gregory," he said quietly, and he took the Brit by the hands carefully, staring into his eyes. Gregory stared back and felt the irritation start to swirl away, down the drain, like something had flushed in his mind. He felt suddenly ashamed of himself. How could The Mole be so strong about something like this, when it would so obviously cut him deeply afterward? The thumbs caressed the backs of his hands, and the French boy pressed their foreheads together; Gregory winced against the pain in his still slightly bruised forehead. The sheets were very comforting, holding everything else back from them. "…You know ze true reason why I am leaving tomorrow, don't you?"
Gregory's eyes narrowed. "Of course I do. It's because your mum's a—"
"NO, mon chéri. Eet eez not because of zat. Eet eez because…plainly and seemply…God 'ates me."
There was a very long, awkward silence between them after that. Mole brushed curls behind Gregory's ear and sighed sadly, avoiding the glistening blue eyes as best he could. Gregory's fingers tensed around the callused hands of his counterpart. "…N-no…Christophe, don't say that. God doesn't hate you. God loves everyone."
"Oh, does 'e? Zen why does 'e let people go to 'ell? Why does 'e send 'omosexuals and ze people 'oo cannot confess to 'ell, Gregory? And why ze fucking 'ell does my life 'urt me so badly? Zer eez one explanation, Gregory, and zat eez zat God does play favoreets, and I am just not one of zem." Gregory stared at him, not comprehending. Mole sighed. "…You, 'owevar…"
"Christophe, please. Don't say that kind of thing to me ever again," Gregory cut him off, and The Mole could hear the suffering in the little Brit's tone.
"I am just saying what eez true," Mole explained quietly. He looked into the cerulean eyes and tried not to appear guilty, and Gregory shook his head and cuddled into him, sighing.
"…For once, Christophe…please listen to me. For once, let's let it be about what I want, okay?"
The green eyes narrowed. "Gregory…eet eez always about what you want."
The Brit pressed his blonde head into The Mole's chest, closing his eyes, hurt. "Shut up and sleep, Mole…I want to remember the way you snore."
For the first and probably the only time in his life, Gregory regretted that The Mole had actually done what he had wanted him to do.
Mole's departure was painful on all levels for both of the Thornes; Gregory felt it emanating off of his mother as she hugged the mousy little French boy good-bye, and then even more as he himself embraced him. Mole had been Gregory's one and only true friend.
What bothered Gregory more, though, was the strange feeling that he had somehow come to accept the fact that Mole would be gone forever in a matter of hours. Whether it was from his own mother telling him that they would be moving down to Ms. Delorne's new little mountain town later that week—to live about twenty miles away from the Delornes and make sure that they settled themselves all right—or from something else, Gregory wasn't sure. Whatever it was, though—that feeling of Mole being not-quite-as-far-away-as-he-would-have-been-otherwise,or just simply maturing—was less than all right with Gregory. He didn't cry when the car pulled out of the driveway and that little French face, looking even more like a dog now than it had nearly three years ago, had pressed sadly against the glass of the window and the lips had mouthed:
"I'll come back for you, mon chéri."
He would have liked to cry.
He had promised The Mole that he would cry once they were separated, and not doing so made him feel that much more terrible about the heartbreaking event. His eyes refused to spill tears, though, and he wondered later on if that was his subconscious working on fulfilling the second promise he had made to his best friend; to remain strong, no matter what, even after he was gone. Maybe, Gregory thought, it wouldn't be so bad if he managed to keep one of the promises. Maybe he could cry, later.
The rest of that fateful day the house felt cold and empty, void of the little soldiers and the tank and Christophe's shoes lying haphazardly in the middle of the hallway, seemingly everywhere you put your feet. Gregory stayed in his room and read until it was time for dinner, and although he came to the table, he wasn't really there. Lost in his own thoughts, he didn't pay attention to a single thing that his mother said to him. She watched him from across the table worriedly, and eventually fell silent. She didn't even make him eat his vegetables before he solemnly got up and went to take a bath.
He tried to sleep but it didn't work. He kept glancing back over toward the corner of the room where Mole's bed had been only twenty-four hours ago, almost expecting to see the little Frenchman lying there on his mattress in his striped pajamas and staring at him with some tiny secret smile on his face. He kept disappointing himself, doing more damage each time he chanced a glimpse, and eventually he rolled over and faced the wall, hating everything about Ms. Delorne. She had taken away the only thing he had ever really wanted to hold on to, and she deserved to be loathed for that reason. She deserved to burn, he thought darkly, and he buried his face in his pillow and slept.
Gregory wandered around the house like a zombie until the day that he and his mother shipped out with a moving truck following them ominously, and even then he stared out the window blankly, silent and deep in his own thoughts. He could tell that it scared his mother, but at that point he could only care for himself. He was the one who was in pain, after all. He was the one who needed consolation for his injuries. And although he thought that thinking that sort of thing may have been a bit selfish of him, Gregory was a seven-year-old boy who didn't yet understand the concept of heartbreak, so in turn, he did not grasp the fact that he shouldn't have felt guilty about frightening his mother. He smiled weakly at her when she asked him if he was all right, sinking further down into the back seat of the old Jetta and licking his wounds. His fingers rested, trembling, on the spot that a little boy named Christophe Delorne had once filled.
Aside from all of that, Gregory was, of course, very nervous about moving to a new town, where he knew no one and he would most likely be judged right off the bat. South Park was, as he had heard from people at the convenience stores closer to the old neighborhood (distantly, during his zombie stage, so he only remembered whispers of the conversations), a very raucous place; sort of a redneck's retreat, where strange things often happened. It had a very small population, and the kids were all foul-mouthed, dirty, villainous little brats, who picked their noses and started fights and played Playstation games instead of reading books and doing crossword puzzles. Gregory had no reason whatsoever to be inclined to move there, but Katherine told him that he would probably like it out there; it would be much easier to stand out in the public school system, besides, and the little girls these days liked boys who knew a lot.
Gregory wasn't interested in girls, but he nodded anyway to keep her from stressing about something else as he watched her and the movers begin to unpack their things. The new house was cold and had two stories, and he hated the white walls and gray bathroom tile; it reminded him of a hospital, and he didn't really want to be there at all. It made him feel alone, and feeling alone reminded him that he was alone. Mrs. Thorne noticed that he was still lying melodramatically on the sofa in the living room after an hour or so of work, and she gave him a bit of an exasperated look.
"Gregory, honey…why don't you go outside and play? Maybe you'll make friends with some of the neighborhood kids."
"Mum, I don't want to make friends with them," he pouted. "I want to go back to the cabin, and Yardale, and Christophe."
"Well, you know how my work goes, sweetheart. They cun only live with us until they have enough money to support themselves. Since this was such a…a special case, we moved out here so that we cun keep an eye on them for maybe a year or so, and then we'll go back up to the cabin while they stay down here," Katherine said softly, arranging knick-knacks half-consciously on the mantle. "…Christophe gave you his new address, baby. Why don't you just find someone who can give you directions to his house, and then you can come back here so I can drive you up there, and the three of you cun play together? Bring your toboggan, I know you two always had fun with that."
"Ms. Delorne hates me, Mum," Gregory responded dryly, picking at a tiny rip in the sofa cushion. "I doubt she'll even let me in her house. She's such a bitch."
The moment he said it, he regretted it. "Gregory!" Mrs. Thorne hissed, dropping a figurine where it was and walking over to her son with her hands on her hips. Gregory's eyes shot open and fixed themselves upon Katherine's face, knowing that he was probably in trouble, now. He sat up and lowered his eyebrows when she knelt down in front of him, placing her hands on his shoulders. She sighed and stared at him for a moment, almost analyzing him, her lips pursed firmly. He could see wrinkles at the corners of her eyes, almost like The Mole's, only much more feminine. His heart ached and he didn't care anymore that he had called Nicole a bitch in front of his mother. "…Gregory, please…don't argue with me. I know this is going to be hard on the both of us, especially you, since Christophe was your first and best friend…but we've got to be strong through it, all right? So go outside and bring your sled and go and make friends. That's the only way that you'll ever get over it, all right, honey?"
His lips trembled and he nodded, ashamed of himself. He didn't want to get over it, but he had no other choice but to agree with his mother. She kissed his forehead and brushed his golden hair out of his face, met with slightly watering eyes when she had finished. She smiled at him and pulled him into her arms, hugging him warmly. He sniffled and blinked the stinging away. "…I'm sorry, Mum…I'll go…it…it's a nice neighborhood. I saw some kids skating earlier…I'll go…see if they'll let me skate with them…"
Mrs. Thorne laughed airily, and Gregory suddenly realized that she felt just as bad about leaving The Mole alone with Nicole as he did. He hugged her tighter, loving her. "…Goodness, Gregory…you're so stubborn and opinionated…so much like your father that it scares me, sometimes…" she murmured. They exchanged a brief, light smile. "Here…give me a kiss, love, then go and find your clothes. Make sure that you dress warmly, it's freezing outside…"
He pecked his mother's cheek (she smelled like makeup and peach hand soap) and rose from the couch, making his way solemnly over to the stairs and climbing them without much fervor. He hesitated on the fifth step. Back at the cabin, the fifth step from the bottom had always creaked, because Mole had always taken a flying leap from there and jumped the last four steps. It had always been just to impress Gregory, who had only ever had enough courage to jump the final two steps. The third step had never creaked, though. Gregory trudged up the stairs and found his room, painted an icy blue and carpeted in beige. He shuddered at the sight of his bare mattress; everything felt so cold and vast and empty, now. He was no longer being comforted by The Mole's silent presence—those vague smiles and that spellbinding gaze—and he felt somehow incomplete without it all.
His clothes were in boxes, each labeled with a season and either "shirts" or "pants". He found the winter boxes and pulled out a thick orange button-down shirt that his mother had bought for him while he and The Mole had been at the Academy, and with a sigh, he pulled the fresh shirt on over his white turtleneck. He stopped for a moment once he had done this and stared, a bit absently, at the boxes once again. Which one were his skates in, again? Oh yes…of course…shoes. Grumbling half-consciously to himself, he jerked the box open and sifted through about six pairs of shoes, finding the ice skates a little later than he probably should have. But he got over the fog a little, and his gloves were easy enough to find, sitting on his dresser. He wrapped the matching brown scarf around his neck before heading down the stairs again, this time with his ice skates in tow, but with an irritated frown still plastered to his face.
It was very cold outside. Holding the skates by their laces, Gregory surveyed his new neighborhood with a very scathing eye. There was white everywhere. A path led down his snow-encrusted driveway and onto a stick-straight road, running parallel to the snow banks on the opposite side. The sky was gray, and off in the distance, there were a few gray-brown trees dotting the pale horizon line. It all looked so dead, Gregory thought miserably, pulling his scarf up over his mouth to ward off the cold. Like a dead wasteland of ice. At least up at the cabin, there had been the green of the pine trees to liven the environment all year long. He glanced over his shoulder. Even his house was painted a sickening blue-gray. This, he thought, is what Hell would look like if it were frozen over.
Shuddering, he stormed down his front steps and began to walk along the road, toward that little frozen pond he had seen earlier where the children had been skating. He would at least go to the pond, he thought; he didn't really have any intentions of speaking to any of these rogues, and he wouldn't have a reason to, really, lest they talked to him first. He doubted that any of them would even strike his interest, though; from what he had heard, they were all simply barbarians. His boots crunched through the day-old snow, disagreeing with a patch of ice every once in a while and making him flail his arms to keep his balance, and with each passing second, he grew more and more flustered with both himself and his mother. He began to pass more houses, and then there was a plowed street and sidewalks, and adults passing him as he walked. Some of them smiled at him, but some of them just shot him angry and questioning looks, as if they knew he shouldn't have been there. He averted his eyes from all of them and tried to keep his gaze downward as he traveled, past the plastic surgeon's store, past the drug store, past the movie theater (where there was a poster advertising some Canadian film). He ignored everything and sighed when a scraggly, long-since-dead tree caught his eye, and he saw the sign that told him he had made it:
STARK'S PONDThere were only a couple of kids there; a girl with curly blonde hair, he saw as he approached the ice, who was giggling and talking with a boy in a blue hat. A short, skinny, gullible-looking boy with a tuft of flyaway blonde hair atop his head. An African-American boy, skating figure-eights near the middle of the pond. A few others. None of them really appealed all that much to Gregory, but as he sat down on the edge of the ice and began to put his skates on, they all noticed him and started to whisper amongst themselves. He sensed all their eyes on him as he laced up his shoes, ignoring them until he finally decided that maybe acknowledging them would make them lose interest. He looked up at the crowd and waved obtusely, and that was when he saw her.
She was in the front of the pack, now, watching him carefully as he worked at his skates. He stopped for a second and just stared at her, a bit taken aback. She was…somehow different than those other kids were. Deciding that he was worth approaching, she smiled at him and skated over to him easily, her pale cheeks tinted pink from the cold, her breath clouding before her. Her dark blue eyes glistened in the dim light filtering through the cloud cover, sheets of long, raven hair spilling out behind her, over her deep violet winter coat. She stopped in front of him and blinked flirtatiously, thinking for a moment as she looked him over. He smiled back at her and stood as he finally finished tying his skates.
"…Hi," she said sweetly; her voice was quiet and very high-pitched, as if it strained her delicate throat just to speak. "My name is Wendy Testaburger. I've never seen you here before…are you new?"
"Yes," Gregory replied, linking his hands together. "Err…I'm Gregory Thorne. I just transferred here from Yardale." Her expression changed to one of what Gregory assumed was confusion; it made her face look even cuter, if that were possible. She was a very pretty girl, he decided, and he stepped carefully onto the ice beside her. "It's a private school, farther up north, in the higher mountains. I had a four-oh grade point average while I attended school there."
"Oh," Wendy murmured, sounding impressed, and then she giggled softly. "You sound a little bit like this boy I know named Pip. You're British, aren't you?"
"Why, yes," he said, grinning at her. "My mother and I moved here from England when I was just four years old."
She batted her eyelashes at him again, her lips still traced upward in a friendly smile. "Wow. It must've been really cool to live overseas…"
"Ah…yes. It was very…'cool'. At least…from what I remember, it was."
She laughed at him, bright and beautiful, and then she grabbed his hand, slipping her palm carefully over his in a very familiar way. "I like you, Gregory. Come and skate with me, and you can tell me all about yourself, okay?"
"Oh. Well, all right, then, Wendy," he responded, and he followed her out toward the middle of the pond, laughing with her as he told her carefully selected things about himself. He didn't know if she would understand everything about The Mole that he had to say about him, so he didn't chance enlightening her.
…So perhaps they're not all barbarians, he thought to himself after a little while of skating with Wendy. She had introduced him to the other children (none of whom really seemed very interesting, to him), and he had smiled at them all, though really he was more focused on her. He didn't like girls, sure, but Wendy was somehow…exceptional. Maybe it was because the way she had simply asserted herself into his life reminded him of The Mole. He found that extremely attractive and decided very quickly that as long as he was going to be forced to live there in South Park, he might as well make the best of it. He skated with her and held her hand and laughed when she told him stories about her own friends.
It had been about two hours when a small group of boys wandered up to the pond with no skates about them. Obviously they had no intention of skating, and, Gregory thought as he looked them over, if anyone in that town was a barbarian, it was most likely those ruffians. The fat one had a mean face and tiny, beady eyes that shifted around every once in a while, as if he was expecting someone to insult him and he wanted to catch them in the act, and his yellow-clad hands were balled into fists against his disgusting gut. The way that the one in the blue hat smiled gave Gregory the feeling that he was very easily confused and knew next to nothing about the world around him. The one in the green hat looked overly-confident in himself, but the way he stayed close to the shorter, blue-hatted boy made Gregory think that he was probably quite ignorant, as well. The one in the orange hood had stains all over his parka and kept scratching himself, which gave the impression of a child that had been allowed to run wild since birth. The blonde Brit turned his nose up at them and stayed on the other side of the pond with Wendy, even after the other children began to congregate around the new arrivals.
"We just saw the Terrance and Phillip movie!" Gregory heard a voice say, and Wendy perked up at the sound of someone familiar, casting a wary glance over toward the crowd. Damn, he thought bitterly, she knows them. Now she'll want to go introduce me. This is exactly what I didn't want to happen. She squeezed his hand and leaned closer to him for a second.
"Come on, let's go say hi…I think you'll like Stan!"
I doubt it, he thought, although he sighed and nodded on the outside, following her at a distance over to the group of boys.
"Yes, yes, I saw the Terrance and Phillip movie, now who wants to touch me?" the fat boy asked, looking appallingly proud of himself. Gregory slowed down and let Wendy twirl her way over to the boys on her own. The fat boy glanced around and scowled when no one reacted. "…I SAID WHO WANTS TO FUCKING TOUCH ME?"
The skinny, gullible-looking blonde boy reached tentatively forward and touched the back of the fat boy's hand with two careful fingers. "…Oooh," he remarked quietly, and a smug smirk wormed its way onto the fat boy's face. Gregory noticed that the blue-hatted boy (whom he assumed was "Stan") was fixated on Wendy, who had accidentally sprayed ice in his face. She smiled warmly at him (a hint that perhaps there had once been something between the two of them), and Gregory growled to himself, skating huffily over to the two of them. He would not lose another wonderful friend for such a stupid reason.
"Come, Wendy," he said to her, just a hint of jealousy in his voice. "Let us try to jump the hilly brush."
Stan frowned at Gregory and furrowed his eyebrows, brushing ice off of his coat. "Who're you, kid?"
"My name is Gregory," Gregory said astutely, linking his hands behind his back. "I just transferred here from Yardale, where I had a four-oh grade point average."
Stan blinked stupidly, as if not comprehending a single word that the Brit had just said. "…We just saw the Terrance and Phillip movie!" he responded dully, and Gregory cocked his eyebrows at him slightly. That had nothing to do with what he had just said.
"…Oh-ho…" he said quietly, trying not to come out and say that talking to Stan was not worth his time in the least. He turned to Wendy, deciding that avoiding the problem altogether was probably the best solution. "Try and catch me, Wendy!" he suggested, skating off to the opposite end of the pond again. He heard her bid a quiet good-bye to Stan before she skated off after Gregory, and the blonde smiled to himself.
Maybe this won't be as bad as I thought it would be.
"So did you make any friends today, baby?" Katherine asked curiously, watching her son over the salt and pepper shakers in the box-filled kitchen. Gregory chewed his meatloaf thoughtfully and smiled at her once he had swallowed.
"Yes, Mum. I met someone very nice. I think we'll grow to be…the best of friends," he said quietly, turning his peas over on his plate. He remembered his and Mole's short-lived adventures with the walkie-talkies, and he sighed dimly into his food. Katherine didn't catch the sad sound.
"Very good, sweetheart! What's his name?"
"Her, Mum. It…she's a girl."
"Oh!" Katherine looked very surprised by this, but she gave him a devious look as mothers will when they hear of their children gaining any sort of interest in the opposite sex. "Well then. What's her name?"
"Wendy," Gregory answered, still staring half-consciously at his peas. "I think we'll be in the same grade this year. She looked a little older than me, but, you know…since I didn't go to kindergarten…she would be about a year older."
"Right," Mrs. Thorne agreed, still with that hint of a teasing tone in her voice. "Well…is she pretty?"
Gregory snapped out of his trance and fixed his mother with an accusing stare. "Mother. I do not have a crush on Wendy."
"Of course you don't, honey," Katherine said, smiling. Gregory scowled at her for a moment before looking angrily back down at his vegetables, red-faced.
"…Yes, Mum. She's very pretty," he said softly, stabbing some of the peas. "But looks aside, she's nowhere near Christophe. I mean, the way she…she could never…" he paused and flushed some more, shaking his head. Katherine was watching him carefully from across the table, amused by how flustered he was. "…She reminds me of him, I guess, in the way that she's the only one who really talks to me…but…she's a girl. It's not going to be the same at all—"
"Ah! Goodness, Gregory, thank you for reminding me…" she rose from the table suddenly and dashed over to the countertop, leaving her son sitting very confused on his own at dinner. He stared at her, dumbfounded, as she brought a piece of paper back to the table and handed it to him. A phone number was scrawled hastily on it in his mother's loopy handwriting.
"…What's this?" he asked.
"Nicole called my cell phone earlier…she said that Christophe has been doing nothing but moping around and sighing since they moved in, and she wants you to call their house sometime soon to 'snap him out of it'." Gregory stared at the number, his heart swelling gradually in his chest like a big, happy balloon as the words sank in more and more. "So maybe you could call him tomorrow morning? I'm sure he'd appreciate it."
The little blonde boy swallowed thickly and set the paper down beside his plate daintily, as if it were made of porcelain and one false move would send it spiraling into oblivion. He could not lose this chance to talk to The Mole. He just couldn't. He smiled up at his mother and loved her more than he ever had before.
"…Thanks, Mum," he said gently. "…I'll do that."
He ate his peas and, to Katherine's relief, he finished dinner with a smile on his face. At that point, that was all she could have asked for.