Chapter Two:
Nobody Told Me (Life Goes On)


The lonely full moon hung quietly in the still sky, all the while giving forth its pale, silvery light to the snow in the graveyard. The grave markers in this necropolis sat still as statues in a state of lifeless tranquility. It was almost as if the crickets were afraid to disturb the dead on this particular night. A gust of snow rose from the tops of the memorials as if the wind did not care about the deceased's tranquil desires. As quickly as it came, the wind stopped as if realizing where it was.

The dead, for the most part, received their deserved undisturbed rest. Very rarely did anyone visit the cemetery these days. Most of its occupants were forgotten and lost to the busy hustle and bustle of the nearby town. On this night, however, there was a lone visitor; one whom the dead had not seen before. With every hesitant step the teen-aged girl took toward her uncertain destination, the tranquil atmosphere changed ever so slightly. It was uncertain or possibly confused.

The girl, possibly sensing the change within the silvery air, shivered and hugged her wine colored parka closer to herself. "It sure has gotten cold out…" she mumbled to no one save herself, or perhaps to any zombies, vampires, or other groovy goulies hiding beyond her sight. Perhaps this was directed to the night's atmosphere itself to break the ice between them. If the latter was the case, it did nothing to ease the tension building just with her mere presence.

She wandered systematically amongst the grave markers, as if searching for a particular one. Her dark hair fluttered behind her as she moved from stone to stone. Her thin lips silently read the names on every stone she happened upon and then immediately mouthed a curse when it was not the one desired. Her brow narrowed in frustration. Surely he was around nearby. The night seemed to feed on her apprehension causing her to jump. The nervousness was apparent in her eyes as she surveyed the area around her. "I know. I don't belong here," she mumbled to the night time scene, "I just came to talk to someone. I'll be quick. I swear!"

The girl slowly stalked her way to a group of stones across the pathway, passing one with a cooking utensil offering along the way, and breathed a sigh of relief when she finally found the one person she was questing for. The thickening tension in the air dispersed into the night, leaving her alone with the moon in the cemetery. She sat at the grave's feet and intently studied the writing on the front. In bold gothic letters the epitaph read "Here lies Stan Marsh. Sleep well, little child, for the Lord holds thee now."

Sorrowful tears welled up in her dull grey eyes as her lips trembled. "Hi, Stan," she choked aloud, "It's me…Wendy. After all these years, I've…finally come to see you. I probably look different to you, don't I? Yet, when I see you, in pictures or my mind's eye, you're… You're always the same; never changing, never aging, never different, always how you were all those years ago." She sniffed and wiped a few stray tears from her eyes. "I…" As she trailed off, she looked to the sky, as if the moon and the stars would guide her with her choice of words, and exhaled her nervousness with a deep frosty sigh. "I can't believe it's been nearly ten years to the day. Ten years of spending my life living in a remorseful paradise."

She grabbed her folded legs, and with a stilted chuckle, began to rock back and forth. "Seems hindsight is twenty-twenty." Her rocking ceased as she slumped forward, almost with defeat. "What happened to you was…my fault. I've come to accept that now. I remember…hiding in my room for weeks afterwards. I felt so guilty over what had happened between you, me, and Token. I wish it had never happened. I wish...I had worked up the courage to apologize to you after our last fight. Then maybe..." She leaned even farther forward and rested her dark-haired head on the cold tombstone in front of her, which caused her pink beret to fall to the snowy ground beside her. "I remember not being able to face people after I found out. Actually, I don't really remember much of anything between then and now. Only my room. My bed. My parents pulling me out of school. Intense guilt. My mind kept repeating all the bad things I had last said to you."

Wendy's face contorted in mental anguish as she gripped the granite slab with each painful sob. "I couldn't go to school because you weren't there!" she wailed between her tears. "I couldn't leave my room because everyone blamed me for it! Eh-especially Kyle. I know he did. I know he still does. I can hear him in my head, pointing at me, blaming me." She sighed and twisted around so that she was leaning her back against Stan's stone marker. "And he has every right. I was young and didn't think that you would take me leaving you the way you did. But you did. And now… We're here without you." She chuckled nervously to herself and ran a trembling hand through the hair dangling in her eyes. "The irony is that I did what I did because I was jealous of your relationship with Kyle and...felt lonely. If only I knew what loneliness was then. I wish I could go back in time and kick my own ass."

She picked up her beret and held it in the moonlight to talk to it, as if it were really the intended person to hear her words. "I thought about ending it. My life, that is. I thought about following in your footsteps. Razor blade to the wrists, overdose of sleeping pills, toaster in the bathtub, walking off the roof of my house, drinking the entire contents of my parent's liquor cabinet in one sitting…" She threw her hat to the ground with a curse and continued her conversation with the moon instead. "I couldn't do any of them. All I ended up with were scars, sleeping an entire week straight, soggy toast, a broken leg, and getting so wasted on my thirteenth birthday that I passed out in a puddle of my own vomit. And even that didn't kill me!" She growled in anger and brought her knees closer into a hug.

"All I wanted was to either turn back time to when you were still alive so I could do things differently or get yellow tape around my house as I laid in a chalked outline." With an exasperated sigh, she buried her face between her knees. "I failed with both. Time always moves forward and I'm still alive." She sat in silence with nothing more to add. The leaves on the trees rustled behind her as if the night was trying to respond. Its message, whatever it was, was lost to the young girl as she stretched her lower extremities. After picking herself up out of the snow and brushing it off, she looked down and wiped more tears from her eyes. "In short, Stan… I miss you and...I'm sorry."

"Well, fancy seeing you here." The voice that called out to her seemingly came from everywhere and nowhere at the same time. It also caused her to squeal in surprise as she whirled around in search of the source. She gasped, again in surprise, and brought a hand to her chest as she took an apprehensive step back.

"Kyle?" came a slight stuttered murmur from Wendy's lips, "Whuh-what are you doing here?" She shook her head to clear her thoughts. "No, the question I should be asking is HOW LONG have you been here." The boy in green and orange chuckled at her sudden change in attitude as he made to approach her. He stopped dead in his tracks and adopted a thin frown when she held out a hand to keep him at a distance. Kyle nodded his head in regards to her wishes and then promptly shrugged.

"Honestly," came his soft response, "I pulled up not long after you arrived. This is normally when I stop by here."

Narrowing her eyes in frustration, Wendy folded her arms across her chest. "So… You basically heard everything I had to say." The boy simply nodded his confirmation. "Go ahead then. Hate me. Hate me for killing your best friend." She sharply turned away from him and tried to fight back the anguish that was trying to escape.

Kyle raised an eyebrow as if confused. "I…" He observed a moment of silence to choose his words carefully. "I didn't know I hated you for anything." His words were spoken slowly in a calming manner. Clearly, the young girl was in need of some calm. Upon taking a step closer to the distraught girl, he offered, "In fact, I didn't know that you were what killed him."

"Not…directly," came a choked reply.

"Dude, you really have no idea what actually happened, do you?"

"I… I know…enough. He…committed suicide."

"Dude…"

"And I drove him there!" she cried as she whirled around to face the boy behind her. It was a full force torrential downpour of tears from her eyes. Powerful sobs attempted to escape her lips as she tightly shut her eyes in a struggle to keep her emotions in check. "It was all me!"

Kyle's eyes opened wide with shock enough to fry a monkey in pig grease. "So that's why you disappeared…" He quickly approached her and enveloped her in a tight embrace. "Dude, it wasn't you," he whispered, "So stop thinking that."

Wendy roughly shoved him away in an angry response. "Bull shit!" she uttered harshly.

Bewildered, Kyle shook his head and gave a shrug. "Dude, I'm serious! You had nothing to do with it!" As the girl growled in frustration, she roughly shoved past him to walk away. "Wendy! He was murdered!" She stopped dead mid stride, but continued facing in the direction she had been heading. Her bloodshot eyes studied the graveyard before her between the tears, as if somewhere there she would find a confirmation of what she had just heard.

"He… Who? ...What?" she stammered. Had she been wrong all these years? Had the guilt, the depression, and the loneliness been for nothing? She twisted her head to look back when a reassuring hand was felt on her shoulder. "Kyle? You're leading me on…right?"

Kyle seemed to study what he could see of her face and scrunched his own up into a tiny frown. "I'm not. Dude, Stan had accepted whatever had happened between the two of you. He was pissed, but seriously, after shit went down, he just shrugged his shoulders whenever it was brought up."

"So, then…?"

"It was Cartman." His voice wavered darkly. "Fucking fat ass." The young Jew took a moment to compose himself before he continued. "It was..." he began, "Nine-? Ten-? -years ago. We were hanging out at fat ass's house playing football. At one point, Cartman stopped us to show us a bottle of pills he claimed to have found in the park. I was skeptical, of course, but when challenged…" The boy scoffed and lowered his head into his palm. He whispered, "You fucking dumbass, Stan." Wendy fully turned to face Kyle and watched him with eyes that begged for him to continue. "So, both Stan and Kenny took up Cartman's challenge to swallow one to see what would happen. I declined to participate. I didn't even watch them swallow anything. I couldn't. I just know that the three of them each had one. Cartman was fine. Kenny was fine. Stan…" Kyle raised his eyes to look directly into Wendy's. "Stan went into anaphylactic shock and promptly died right then and there before Kenny or I could get help."

Wendy gasped and brought her hands to her mouth. "He… He was allergic to penicillin…" she offered meekly.

Kyle grinned an angry grin and slowly spoke aloud, "And guess what was in that bottle. Guess what Cartman dared him to take. Guess who fucking got away with it."

"All this time…" she sobbed softly, "All this time I thought it was me." She embraced him in a tight hug and cried into his shoulder. "All this time I thought it was me!" Taken off guard, Kyle hesitated for a moment before he returned the embrace. "Why, Kyle?! Why didn't anyone tell me?!"

"Dude… Kinda hard when you just disappear from the face of the planet and tell no one what you're thinking. I mean, I would have if I had known that had you felt this way."

Wendy broke the embrace with Kyle and turned back in the direction of Stan's final resting spot. With a scoff she muttered, "I've been spending most of my life living in a remorseful paradise and turns out it was needless. For nothing." Looking to the stars in the sky, she asked of them, "Why was I blind to see that the one I seriously hurt in the end was only me?" Saying nothing in response, Kyle stared at the back of her head with that funny scrunched up accordion frown on his face and waited for her to say something he could respond to. Sighing, she turned back to face him and wiped stray tears from her eyes. "Kyle?"

"Yeah?"

"I don't want to go home."

"Where do you want to go, then?"

"I don't care. I just know that I don't want to see the four walls of my room any more."

Kyle nodded in understanding and gave a slight smirk. "Then let's go hang out at Denny's. Kenny should be at work right now."

Wendy chuckled tearfully as she, again, wiped her eyes clear. "I think I'd like that," she murmured, "I think… I think in time I'll be able sort this all out."

After picking up her beret from where it had landed, he put a comforting arm around her shoulders and led her towards the exit. "Welcome back, Wendy."

"But…I never left South Park."

Kyle held up a finger with his free hand and with the manner of a matter-of-fact smart ass declared, "Technically no, but you left all of us to hide in your own personal world. To celebrate the occasion of your return, I'll treat you to a bacon maple sundae!"

"Ewwww!" Wendy made a face and shook her head in disgust. "Bacon and ice cream? That's gross, Kyle!"

"What? Dude, it's good!"

"You've had it?! But you're Jewish! You can't eat bacon!"

"Please, I only practice Judaism at Hanukkah. I could care less nowadays."

"Doesn't that make you a bad Jew?"

"I never said I was a good one. People just assume for some reason."

"Huh."

As the pair exited the cold necropolis and entered Kyle's vehicle, the still wind stirred to raise the grounded snow into the air. If they had hesitated to leave, they would have noticed the swirling snow take on the faint form of a sad, haggard looking ten year old boy. They also would have heard a faint voice in the wind; a faint, angry child-like voice. If they had been listening closely, the threat it whispered would have sent chills down their spines.