Kenny wasn't at school the following Monday, and in the resulting solitude that Craig had been left in, he'd been forced to think about a number of things.

He'd come to the conclusion that the only thing worse than taking care of the project without a partner was the uneasy feeling that Kenny's absence had left him with. He hadn't cared to ask until now, but, as he found, it was customary for Kenny to disappear for days, sometimes weeks, and nobody looked for him, nobody asked questions; they just carried on until he returned. Don't worry, they said, he always came back. Kyle Broflovski, Stan Marsh, and Eric Cartman were the last people Craig would ever put any merit into, but the way they were so nonchalant about this made him feel forced to believe them. If they could pull drama from a situation, he was sure they would. The fact that they weren't just proved further how common this was.

(Craig had approached them Tuesday at lunch. The conversation was short and simple and it went something like this:

"Where the fuck is Kenny, he's supposed to work on a project with me."

Kyle was the first one to look up from his lunch; he wrinkled his nose and shrugged in response. "I don't know, he does that sometimes."

And then Eric joined in, his mouth full of food, "That fuck. He does that all the time and we don't know where he goes."

"But he'll be back in a few days," Kyle chimed. "Don't worry, he always does this."

"Yeah, man," Stan added, though it was completely unnecessary for him to say anything and oh God oh God did Craig hate them all –

"Okay. Bye."

And then, in swift movement, he turned around, shot a hand up in a half-assed wave, and got out of there.)

For the next couple of days, Craig found himself scanning the hallways, searching crowds, glancing out of his window in hopes of seeing a blonde boy in orange. Tuesday came and went and there was no sign as him. Wednesday night, he sat at his old desk, thinking about that saying, that absence made the heart grow fonder, and he cursed it. Thursday was shaping up to be just the same.

It wasn't until that afternoon, a few hours after Craig had gotten home from school, that his home phone rang.

He'd been downstairs with his sister, Ruby, and they were watching television, paying little attention to each other. She jumped at the sound of the ringer, and then stared at it, confused. Nobody ever called the Tuckers, except for the occasional telemarketer.

Ruby turned to Craig and frowned, "You're oldest, you answer it."

Craig didn't argue, only picked up the phone, lips pressed together in something that could have been mistaken as concentration, but it was desperation.

"Hey," the voice on the other line breathed. Craig could tell it was Kenny because his voice was twice as hard to understand over the phone as it was in real life – with that parka and layers of scarves and whatever else he could find, the static only made it worse.

"Uh, hey," Craig hesitated, his words feeling unusually heavy on his tongue. (What was happening? Was he reaching the dead via telephone? Had he opened another dimension?)

"Wanna come over?"

xx

Kenny's little sister, Karen, didn't answer the door this time, and Craig was feeling extremely impatient, so he walked right into the house and headed for his bedroom. There were no girls this time and he was more thankful for that than he'd like to admit. Kenny was sitting on his bed – which was really an old, stained mattress on the floor – fully clothed, heavy jacket, boots, and all, looking like he'd just gotten back from some kind of trip.

"Fuck you," Craig said. He flipped him off even though Kenny's eyes were on the ceiling.

"Yeah," Kenny grinned, kicking his feet, flexing his arms as if he was just gaining control of them again. He flung himself up to sit on the edge of the bed, facing Craig. "Sorry about that, usually I get back before anyone realizes I'm gone."

"No, really. Fuck you," Craig repeated, choosing to ignore anything he was hearing. He'd thought of so many things to say when (a small part of his brain crowed, if) he saw Kenny again, and that's what his simple brain had settled on: Fuck you. He continued his lecture, like he'd somehow break this lifelong habit of disappearing. "You can't just fall off the face of the fucking Earth, especially when you have a commitment to something. You left me with that stupid project. I don't even want to do it, I don't need a good grade to pass – "

"Craig, Craig, Craig," he sang, and his voice was belittling – Craig didn't like it at all, but he held his tongue because that's what he always did – "if you could just cease to exist, with no consequences, would you do it?"

Craig shook his head. "What does that even mean?" (It had to mean something, but Craig was too simple-minded to figure it out. He knew this. He didn't want to admit it.) "Point is, you had stuff to take care of. So you can't just disappear."

Kenny sighed, defeated, and Craig wanted to believe that it was because he'd won the argument, and Kenny wanted him to believe that, too, but they both knew it was really because Craig couldn't understand, no matter how thoroughly the matter was explained.

"I'm really sorry," Kenny said, resorting to apologizing, now, seeing as how anything else was useless. "I'll make it up to you."

"That's not what I want."

"Then why even bother yelling?"

"I just wanted to – "

"No, no, don't even answer that," Kenny waved his hand, dismissing their past few lines of exchange, and shook his head. He knew the answer: Craig wanted some sort of explanation, and he couldn't give him that.

Craig sighed. He pouted. Like a kid. Another thing he didn't understand. He was thrilled.

"Is there anything I can do to make it up to you…?" Kenny asked, and the question was hesitant, but hopeful.

"No."

"Come oonnn," Kenny droned, just lightly kicking Craig's knee with his boot.

Instinct screamed at him to keep his face blank, but Craig couldn't help but crack a grin. There was a big pile of schoolwork he'd been abandoning, and Craig wasn't one to make academics a priority, but he at least did the work. "I have to do shit for my photography class. You can help."

xx

Craig's father had a sixteen-year-old beat up Chevy that Craig was allowed to take out, as long as he paid for the gas he used. It was old and destroyed and its gas gauge didn't work so you had to count the miles on it, but it got from point A to point B (most of the time) so he couldn't complain.

Craig drove them to a spot he'd found a year or so ago: a small lake down a dirt path that diverged from the main road a few miles. It was a beautiful place, especially on days like this, and a canopy of trees that hung over the lake gave the perfect lighting for pictures on a sunny day. He'd originally discovered it in search of good scenery, but he'd come to like it even for non-photography related ventures.

It was a nice day for South Park, which didn't mean much, but the residents knew better than to let the small amount of sunshine go to waste. It wasn't often that people could leave their homes without multiple layers of clothing, and they were taking advantage of the occasion. It was strange to see Kenny not bundled up in layers of orange, face partially covered by a scarf or the lining of his parka. Both Craig and Kenny had left their jackets in his car, embracing the not horribly freezing weather.

Craig had almost memorized this place – the way the trees hugged the lake, groping for sunlight, and the way the grass looked with half-thawed snow over it, the way wild flowers sprouted near the edge of the water – but every time he came here, he noticed something new. This visit, it wasn't something about the scenery that he discovered.

They'd gotten to the edge of the lake . Kenny tugged his shirt off and Craig turned to glance at the scene in its whole, hands wrapping around the camera slung around his neck, his pride and joy.

Kenny was scrawny, all bones from sacrificed meals to his siblings when they did have food to eat. Technically, he'd realized one morning as he woke in his bed, recalling his cause of death as starvation, he never had to eat. But starving was a long and painful road to death and he tried his best to avoid it when he could. He wanted to build muscle, and perhaps he could have, but Poptarts and still-frozen waffles were hardly the right foods.

He was tanned golden, clusters of freckles scattered across his shoulders from long days under the sun, when it did show itself.

But it wasn't any of this that caught Craig's attention: it was the scars.

How – Craig thought, scanning his chest, every scar, every mark – how did something happen like that? How hadn't he noticed – how hadn't he heard before? (A thousand scars all over like that, each for a time mortality had failed him, each for a time his body had been flung back to Earth, back into his bed. Each scar for a time he'd been denied paradise, a time he'd been let down.)

The words are big and compulsive, weighing in Craig's mind, and it's all he can think about:

There's an elephant in the room.

Craig didn't mention the scars. He only glanced up to Kenny, who was smiling bright and youthful as if he had some kind of understanding, as if his was saying with his eyes, You see them, too? and Craig tried desperately to respond sullenly with his, I'm so sorry, but the emotion probably never reached his face; it never really did.

It's large and squatting, so it's hard to get around.

The moment was brief, and Craig began to take shots of their surroundings: the lake they'd stopped by, Kenny resting by its side, feet dipped into the clear water, clear and still like glass. Neither of them spoke as the camera's shutter clicked. Kenny occasionally moved, paying little heed to the sound of the camera. Kenny didn't strike poses; he didn't act any differently under the camera. Good, Craig thought. When things became fake, that's when they weren't beautiful anymore. If he wanted a model, he would have asked for a model. If Craig wanted stunning, romantic scenery, he sure as fuck wouldn't have come to South Park.

But we squeeze by with,

"Get anything good?"

"I think so." He focused his reflection in the lake to avoid gawking at the scars.

Kenny exhaled, leaning back onto the palms of his hands, fingernails digging into the grass and the dirt. "Stuff like this makes me not hate this place so much."

We all know it's there, but it hurts. So we don't talk about it.

Looking up from the water and at Kenny, Craig thought what a statement like that meant, coming from someone with all of those scars. How Kenny couldn't despise this place with his being when all of that had happened to him, Craig wasn't sure. He didn't know what had caused the scars or how Kenny hadn't fallen in love with misery after sustaining so many, and he knew he didn't have the capacity to figure it out.

Craig wasn't one for double meanings (he liked things simple – say what you need to say, hold off on all of that figuratism and symbolism and whatever-elseism) but when he responded, "Me too," he wasn't talking about the scenery.

A/N: sorry for the huge amount of time between chapters; i've actually had this written out for a while but i've had some life issues to deal with that was keeping me from editing. the italicized stuff at the end is from a poem i remember reading when i was younger and i'm almost certain the words are off, but hey, it seemed fitting. thanks for all the support, you guys! hope you enjoyed.