I know I said I wouldn't take ages putting this up, but I did. Very sorry. I started it straight away, had a block, and then got back into all my Mighty Boosh stuff and this sort of fell by the wayside again. But a morning of non-stop typing with Hunky Dory playing through several times sorted it out pretty well. I will try not to wait this long again, but I won't make promises because if I'm honest I have no idea if I'll keep them or not.

Also, there won't be any more graphic sex AT ALL. That is a promise.

And as well, I know I've mentioned this before, but if there's anything anywhere in this fic that doesn't sound authentically American, please let me know so I can change it. Thanks.

I hope this is pleasing.

Chapter Seven

Marie had considered it. After all, the situation was dire.

They were alone. They had no money.

Plus, she was the last of the Kankers to lose her virginity.

There was one way to solve all of her problems. All of them at once. It would be easy, she knew. Very easy.

But when she thought of it, the fact that she was underage didn't even enter into it. It didn't matter.

It didn't matter how bad life got, how hard up they were.

Marie Kanker was not going to do that.

Eddy hadn't seen May. They had met in the morning, and then they had had sex, and then she had gone and he hadn't seen her since.

It had been almost two weeks.

Edd was avoiding him. He didn't know why. Was it because he had kissed him, or was it because of… the other thing? That Eddy knew about it. Sometimes people were like that. They didn't want your help.

Ed had clung onto him like a limpet since he had stopped being grounded, and much as he loved the clumsy oaf, there was only so much shouting catchphrases from old b-movies and songs about chickens he could take.

It almost surprised him for a while that once he managed to leave Ed in Jonny's easily amused hands, he headed for the trailer park.

Knocking on the battered metal door, he heard footsteps approach, and Marie opened the door. She looked pretty rough. One bra strap hung down off her shoulder under her vest, and her jeans looked like they hadn't been washed for weeks. Her usual eyeshadow was missing, and Eddy thought he could see brown roots under her blue hair. She looked at him, her pissed-off expression making him wonder if they'd ever really gotten any closer than players in the old Eds-versus-Kankers game of cat and mouse.

"What do you want?" she asked.

"Erm…" he stammered. "Is May in?"

Marie looked him over for a moment. "No."

"Where is she?"

Marie was turned back, about to retreat into the trailer. "Downtown."

"How long's she been downtown?"

"Since eight o' clock this morning."

"What she could just go?"

Eddy was amazed. He wasn't allowed downtown at all, let alone early in the morning, before his parents awoke.

"Yeah…" said Marie, like this was the most natural and obvious thing in the world.

"Your mom let her?"

Marie sighed. Then, suddenly, she spun round and pounded the door with the side of her fist.

"Whoa!" cried Eddy, backing away. "What'd I say?"

"Isn't it obvious, Eddy?" Marie shrieked. "Isn't the most absolutely fucking obvious thing in the fucking world?"

"What?" Eddy pleaded.

Slamming a fist into the door again, this time with the slightest hint of resignation, Marie stalked back into the trailer.

Eddy followed her. Apart from Marie, looking weary and irate collapsed on the old sofa, the trailer is empty. Silent.

Empty and silent at eleven-thirty a.m. on a Sunday morning.

"I'm sorry," he mumbled. "How long?"

"Eight months," said Marie, her voice quiet and flat. "We got home from school and she wasn't there."

"Do you need-"

"We're fine!" Marie snapped.

She glared like a rottweiler on a chain. Eddy fled.

The sun was just beginning to set, but Rolf didn't have time to look up and see the colours in the sky. The potato patch needed hoeing. He really should have done it already. And after that the cowshed needed cleaning out. He had been working far too slowly today. He had been distracted. For a while he'd be fine, but then it'd come flashing back to him and then he just wouldn't be able to take his mind off-

"Rolf!" The all-too-familiar voice was calling to him from the fence at the bottom of the yard. Rolf looked up. He didn't want to. He didn't want to face the consequences of his actions. So far he had managed to avoid them, and he wished it would stay that way. "Rolf, where have you been, man?"

Rolf couldn't think of a reply. How do you tell someone the night you spent with them made you sick to the stomach? If Eric hadn't come and found him, Rolf would have been so happy just to never see him again.

"Rolf, are you okay?"

Rolf jerked out of his thoughts. "Yes," he said, finding his legs taking him unbidden to where Eric was standing. "Yes, Rolf is fine."

Eric smiled, with what looked like relief. "Oh, thank god," he said. "We thought you'd gone the way Lee had." The smile fell from his face, and he leaned in closer to Rolf's face. "Did they find out?" he whispered.

"No."

"It's okay, you know," Eric told him, face serious, with no trace of a smile. "If you're meant to be gay, or bi, you're just meant to be. It wouldn't exist if it wasn't meant to."

He felt that hand on his shoulder, and he shrugged it off. "No," he said.

Eric was looking at him with a sort of faint shock on his face. "Rolf…" he said, and trailed off. His hand rose from where it had settled on the fence and brushed Rolf's cheek. Then he leaned his face up, and his warm lips were on Rolf's again, sucking tenderly, and Rolf was almost sucked back in.

He pushed, and Eric fell backward to the ground. Rolf left him there.

Sarah and Jimmy had spent the day staking out all the other kids. There didn't seem to be much amiss. Kevin and Nazz had been hanging around the lane, not doing much, and Ed and Jonny had gone into the woods and had a long, incomprehensible conversation about squirrels, or mutants. Or mutant squirrels. And Rolf had spent most of the day working in his yard.

But a few very unusual things had been happening. Edd had been sitting around brooding for quite a while. Sarah had wanted to go and cheer him up, but Jimmy had reminded her that they couldn't get too closely involved with the subjects of their investigation. In the evening, Rolf had pushed a strange man over. And, what was strangest, Eddy had gone to the trailer park, alone. There must be something going on. Marie Kanker had opened the door, and she hadn't flirted with him or hit him, which Sarah wouldn't have believed if she hadn't seen it. It must, she told Jimmy, have something to do with the time a few weeks earlier, when Eddy had met May Kanker, and they had gone to the junkyard, and then came out a few hours later and gone to a chemist's.

Jimmy nodded along as they discussed their findings.

Suddenly, they became aware of a strange commotion in the cul-de-sac.

May Kanker was walking down then street, her face screwed up in anger. Proper anger. Not the sort of anger they had when they were chasing the Eds, when they were just playing. Not even the sort of anger they had for everyone else, where they were always trying to look superior. She was just angry.

The other kids were coming to look at her. "Look," whispered Jimmy. He pointed, and Sarah looked and saw that Marie Kanker had come into the cul-de-sac, alone, and was hanging at the back of the crowd.

Eddy came forward and met May. "Hey," he said. "You okay? What were you doing downtown?"

May's face screwed up even more. Then she shrieked. Almost screamed. "I'm fucking sick of it!" she howled. Sarah gasped, and heard Jimmy doing the same next to her. May was crying now. "I'm sick of it. I'm really really sick of it."

They watched her hurl a large, flat object she lad been carrying at a street lamp, then push Eddy away and force her way through the crowd. Looking past everyone else, they saw May throw herself at Marie, and the two disappeared, still hugging.

The other kids began to disappear into their houses. Sarah heard her own mom calling her and Ed in. She and Jimmy walked over to the street lamp where May had thrown what she was carrying, and looked around at it. But it wasn't there.

"Maybe we should go downtown and see where May's been," Sarah whispered to Jimmy as the street emptied.

"Go downtown?" Jimmy squealed, causing Sarah to shush him urgently. "We can't go there! What'll our parents say?"

"They don't have to know, do they." Sarah smiled. She always knew how to make Jimmy see things her way.

Edd slept in late again. He'd started doing it recently, not getting up until maybe ten-thirty each morning, when he had used to get up at seven-fifteen sharp. He liked to get up early. It made the day seem more full, plus, everyone else got up much later than him, so it guaranteed him some time to himself. Sometimes he was glad he was an only child, because it meant he could always have time to himself when he needed it.

But then he woke up to an empty house and realised he had too much time to himself.

He looked at the clock. Nine-thirty-five. Part of him wanted to go back to sleep, because it wasn't really that late, but he forced himself not to. He was awake now, so he really should get up.

He took a shower and pulled on an old CND t-shirt and some baggy jeans, and made sure his beanie covered everything. What to do today? He didn't want to go outside. He'd been feeling very private lately. He got lonely sometimes, but he just didn't feel like facing people.

So… there was always the TV. There might be some quality educational programming on. A nature documentary or something. That might be interesting.

Or it might not; he had already seen most of them.

There was a knock at the front door. Edd's pulse raised a little. Eddy had been coming round and knocking once or twice a day for the past two weeks or so, and Edd had had to hide and pretend he wasn't there until he went away. And there was only so long he could keep doing it for.

But when Edd looked out of his bedroom window, he noticed that it wasn't Eddy who was knocking, but May. He went downstairs and opened the door for her.

"Good morning, May," he said, surprised to find her there, and slightly concerned to see her red eyes.

"Morning Double D," replied May. Her voice was quiet and weak; so different to its usual tone and volume that Edd began to feel quite worried. She smiled, but there was no joy behind it. "Could I have my…"

"Of course," Edd answered quickly, afraid that May was about to cry. He retreated to the living room and came back with a photograph.

"I never meant to throw it away," May told him, stray tears beginning to run down her cheeks.

"I know you didn't," Edd replied. He looked down at the photo. It was a school photo which the girls had paid for, in one of those card frames. In it, Lee Kanker leaned forward on her seat, developing figure as far on show as it could possibly get through her cut-offs and cowboy boots, one hand brushing aside her immaculately curled hair to reveal one perfectly shadowed almond-shaped green eye.

May gave him that joyless smile again. "It's the most recent picture we've got of her," she said.

"Are you sure she's downtown?" Edd asked.

"I don't know where else to look."

May sniffed, and the tears began to flow more freely. She stood there for a few moments as they fell down her face. He heard her breathing deeply, trying to calm herself, before she reached up and wiped the tears away.

"I miss her," she said, her voice now even weaker. "She was a bitch, but I miss her so much."

May turned to go.

"Erm, May," Edd called after her. "If there's anything I can do…"

May smiled again, not quite so sadly this time. "Thanks Double D," she replied. She held up the picture. "And thanks for keeping it."

He watched as she disappeared from the street.