The heart is not a rational organ.

—sure wish I knew

Tweek's point of view:

There wasn't anybody that existed who was like him, I told myself as Craig Tucker wandered away. Even after four years of constant separation, and even before that it wasn't like we'd ever been connected in any way, he was still the only one like himself. I felt like I could find another Stan or Kyle anywhere. Even Kenny or Thomas or Butters.

Craig was too individual to have a copy. I recollected a time during sophomore year where some guy had tried to fight him in the locker room, something about having beef with Clyde and he'd leave Craig bloodied and beaten as a warning. In response, Craig had promptly pulled out his phone, turned it on to the camera recorder, and told some freshman to get good angles before saying to the guy, "Have at it." Later, Kenny told me that the two best friends had been laughing over the footage, Craig donning his new black eye and bruised ribs, Clyde taking absolutely no warning from what went down.

It never went around—the video, not the news—for it was exclusively just a memory for the two to humor. For some reason, I kind of respected Craig for that. I also envied him for taking so many punches without making a noise and not once fighting back. He had no hard feelings, never even ratted on the guy, though someone anonymously fibbed and Clyde's enemy was suspended for three weeks.

And some Friday afternoons Craig would mosey down my street walking Stripe. It was the most adorable scene I've ever had the honor of witnessing. This stoic, unmovable block of a presence wandering around town with a thin black leash and a miniature body of fat and fluff attached to the other end. He'd do it with an air of regularity as though everyone took their guinea pigs out for exercise. I ended up doing my homework at the kitchen table every Friday where I could stare out the window and involuntarily distract myself in the hopes that I'd see him.

I knew from Kenny that he drug tested himself after every incredibly weird dream just to see whether or not he'd taken any hallucinogens. Supposedly it was entertaining for him when it showed up positive, because that most likely meant he had actually lived through the experience rather than subconsciously dreamt it. He would do his sister's laundry, fold her clothes and put them away—even her underwear; he used to work in his dad's car garage as a mechanic which wasn't necessarily strange but it was fucking sexy. I could see him being a grease monkey.

From the same source—but it wasn't like I had ever asked Kenny for all of this information—I learned that Craig only ate homemade noodles and bread, forced his mom into making different flavored jams with him when she'd had a bad day, had a strict set of taste buds and never ate fast food, wanted to grow a handlebar mustache one day as well as own a Rolls Royce, and when he was younger he'd taken courses to learn gentleman's etiquette.

He was one of a kind, just like me. And when he was gone, my pulse beat like a hail storm in my veins. It hurt like one, too.

Nothing hurt as bad as it had when he left, though.

When Craig, Clyde, and Token disappeared from South Park, nobody had really known what to do with themselves for a while. It was like there was this void where the douche bag, jock, and hospitable friend were supposed to be—and then in the next instant it was like they hadn't been there to begin with. People didn't forget, but they treated the three like they'd only been visiting our town from the start. Like everyone knew they'd leave eventually.

The only thing was that everyone thought South Park was impossible to abandon. Families came in, but nobody ever went out. So it was a shock when it finally happened, and even more detrimental when they never came back. I remembered the rest of high school, when I just sat there and thought about how they had to return. But they were fine on their own, I guessed, because that return never came.

For the last three years I tried to forget. Instead, all I managed was to feel the hindrance of loneliness and like I was missing out on something better than what I already had. I couldn't leave—my psychiatrist and the coffeehouse were in South Park—so I'd attempted to get better, because at the very least, the best I could do was eliminate at least something that was wrong with me.

Doing that had landed me a permanent spot in the aforementioned 'getting better'. For the past year, that's where I've been.

And then Kenny offered me a road trip, said that I needed to get away because I was twenty and still couldn't take care of myself. I had naively obliged, and somehow we ended up here in Lakewood. Part of me thought it was all his plan to begin with, and when I'd told Craig that his guess was as good as mine, I had honestly meant it, but the other part is just never sure—another thing I've been 'working on' to 'get better'.

Life kind of sucked when you were crazy and attached yourself to a human who wanted to be nothing but insignificant to the world. To everyone in it. But he couldn't be insignificant to me, not after so much of my time has been cradled in this undying crush I have for him.

He looked so different, too. The Craig I remembered wore nothing but ragtag clothes, and sure, of course they looked good on him—anything would look good on him—but he hadn't cared. Rips in the knees, short sleeves in winter; it was all the same to him. Yet what I saw of him today, it made me wonder. How much of himself had he withheld as we grew up? As he waited for the opportunity to get out and grow where he actually belonged. Because Craig really hadn't been able to flourish in South Park.

"C-Craig wants to draw me," I mused. The words didn't feel right in my mouth. Why would anyone want to ruin a good piece of paper by putting my face on it? I already felt bad enough that an entire class full of papers had been wasted earlier. Had Kenny not tricked me, I wouldn't have done it. A tree would've been saved.

"That's quite the compliment," Kenny smugly said to me. My face was beginning to heat up as a blush spread across my cheeks.

I hadn't even known that Craig liked to draw. Some admirer I was. I didn't know the first thing about the noirette besides the little tidbits Kenny fed me.

Actually, that was a lie. Everyone knew the first thing about Craig and that was—had been—Stripe.

That guinea pig was—used to be—more precious to him than his own dick. But he was gone now and it made me curious as to whether or not art was Craig's way of coping.