"Yo!" Kenny greeted at Kyle's bedroom door. Karen and Ike peered out from behind him. Karen gave a shy wave.
"Hey, guys." Kyle tried to sound more enthusiastic, but failed.
"Guess what? Your mom said we can stay for dinner."
"Oh, cool. What have you guys been doing today?"
"Sleeping in." Kenny bounded in. "Because school's out forever until the end of the week!"
Ike nudged Karen's arm. "Let's play LEGOs."
"Okay."
After the tots left, Kyle corrected Kenny. "You know we're going to have to make up those days in the summer."
"Sounds like a next summer problem." Kenny bounced on Kyle's bed. "Please don't tell me you're doing homework."
"Not exactly." Kyle had not been entirely forthcoming about the psychic forum. He had spent some time messaging Ren about the broad issue of child abuse, asking how Ren dealt with it. After what he had seen with Bebe yesterday, and then there was Kenny, Cartman, Butters, Clyde, Tweek, Firkle, and Lisa Berger. At least half those people on the list were no longer in danger, but he wondered if it happened that often in other places.
Ren's answer was disheartening:
To tell you the truth, I've ignored a lot of them. There are far too many and I can't do much if the only evidence is my extra sense. Courts stopped accepting spectral evidence as legitimate in 1692. There's only so much that one person can do, and, I know this is going to sound selfish, but trying to look out for everyone else is going to be bad for your mental health. If you can do something, great, but if you can't, you'll just have to let it go.
"No homework today," Kenny demanded. "Because school's out forever!"
Kyle was probably the only kid not glad that the school had closed for the time being. How was he supposed to keep an eye on Bebe? Because something had happened. He was sure of it.
Kenny's energetic bouncing abated. "So what happened with you yesterday after you took off? Stan said you ripped your dad a new one over the phone."
So Kenny didn't know about the panic attack afterward. "That's pretty much it," he said. It was not really a lie.
"Does that mean that Tweek-"
"Yes."
"Ah. And Craig stupidly gave away that it wasn't just a rumor," Kenny said with a dry laugh. "Not that any of this is funny. Poor Tweek."
Kyle lowered his head onto his desktop. "Stan was right all along. The world is shit."
"I believe he said it was full of shit."
"That too."
He and Kenny fell into silence until Mrs. Broflovski called out, "Boys! Help me prepare the table for our guests."
Even with the medication and therapy, Kyle still had to be careful about what he touched while he ate. The dishes in his own house usually were safe enough. Very few shocking secrets could jump out at him from them by now, and he was already used to seeing some of the same images over and over again.
Kyle's mother was suffused with worry over him, dismay of the school being closed, and resigned anger at Gerald. She was also determined to show the McCormicks a "civilized" meal.
"Gerald won't be joining us," Sheila explained unnecessarily. "He has been working late most evenings on a very important trial." Despite her disapproval of Gerald taking the helm of the trial, she could never resist a chance to brag about her husband's accomplishments. To Karen, she said. "Gerald is a lawyer."
"That's neat," Karen said.
"It's boring," Ike opined. "They go through the same stuff over and over again. Why don't they just lock the guy up?"
"We don't do that. In America, we ensure that everyone has a chance to defend themselves if they're innocent." Of course, Sheila knew it was more complicated than that, but she felt she had to send a good message to the kids.
"This guy is guilty." Kyle reminded her.
"I know, bubbe, but they have to make absolutely sure."
"What did he do?" Karen asked.
"He locked his son in the employee bathroom and rigged explosives at the door to prevent him from escaping," Kyle summed up, letting his fork clang against the plate. He remembered that it wasn't the first time Tweek's father tested him with a fake life or death situation, but that time he decided to take inspiration from the movie Saw and trap Tweek in the bathroom with a fake corpse. According to Mr. Tweak's demented plan, Tweek was supposed to dig the key out of the body, but instead Tweek was too busy reacting the way that any normal kid would react.
Kyle had happened to be there at the time, and when he saw Tweek's distress, he tried to help, only to get nabbed, chloroformed, and locked in a different storeroom for "cheating."
Kenny raised an eyebrow. "This is you behaving?" He whispered. Kyle shrugged. It was a basic question: he did not tell Karen any more than what everyone at school knew and he put it in the cleanest terms possible.
"Why would he do that?"
"Because he's psycho."
Sheila tried to intervene. "Your father and I agreed that we would not discuss the trial in this house."
"It's not a huge secret, Mom. Everyone in town knew what was going on with the Tweaks. They just didn't bother to do anything about it." At that moment, the fork Kyle was holding snapped in half.
"Kyle! You need to be more careful with the silverware. No, stay seated. I'll get you another one." Sheila crossed back to the kitchen.
Kyle got up anyway. He needed to get away before he did something that would ruin the evening. He ran upstairs, but not to his room. He wasn't abandoning the table. He just wanted to get out of sight so he didn't ruin things. So far, he succeeded at holding back the scream that threatened to burst out of him.
He swiped at a tickle at his nose and it came away with a dab of blood. It looked like bloody noses were going to be a regular thing now. He went to the bathroom and rinsed off the blood until there was no trace of it left.
"Hey dude." Kenny had elected himself to check up on his friend. Kyle had trouble determining how much time had passed before Kenny joined him upstairs. "What's on your mind?" He finally asked.
"Mom has no right to treat me like I'm wrong," Kyle said. "Why didn't anyone do anything? Why didn't I do anything? I'm just as bad. I ignored it and made jokes just like everyone at school."
Kenny held up his hands. "Whoa, whoa, whoa! I don't think anyone knew how bad it really was. If Craig and Tolkien and the others didn't know, then why would we be responsible for Tweek's safety? The only thing we saw before was that Tweek's parents were overfeeding him coffee. Besides, you did try to stop it." Kenny paused before coming forth with a prodding question. "Did he do anything else? Besides chloroform you and shut you in the storage room?"
"He killed you." Kyle finally met his friend's eyes. "Don't you remember that?"
"Yeah, he did." Kenny's curse had pretty much guaranteed that the explosives Mr. Tweak had set up would detonate when Mysterion attempted to free Tweek and kill the superhero. In order to bring some levity to the dismal memory, Kenny reminded him, "It wouldn't be the first time."
"How often do your killers plan to bury your body so it wouldn't be found?" Kyle asked. "Because from what I've seen, people either do the official thing and report it, or they ignore it."
"Uhh," Kenny's memories of what happened to his body were often lost to him. Usually, he'd be sent on to Hell or on some other afterlife realm.
"I mean, don't you think if someone had one dead kid and one unconscious kid hidden in their storeroom, that they'd at least be nervous about it? Even if they didn't care about the kids' lives at all, at least he should be nervous about getting caught?" Kyle did not wait for an answer. He ranted on. "Mr. Tweak didn't care. He just dumped us in the storage room and his only reaction was that he'd take care of us later. Like we were just a chore for him. That's not normal. And the fact that he wasn't the least bit nervous about it, like he knew he was going to get away with it-" Kyle inhaled sharply.
"Dude, he didn't get away with it."
"Whatever he gets isn't going to be good enough."
"We're not done with him," Kenny said, his mannerism edging towards Mysterion.
A few minutes later Kyle was ready to return to the table. He managed to keep silent for the rest of dinner. His mother had the sense to take Kenny and Karen home before she called Gerald in a rage.
Kyle could hear her voice clearly from upstairs.
"Gerald, you need to come home now! Kyle was doing so well and now he's had two panic attacks within two days! What have you been telling him?"
Gerald must have sputtered defensively about how he was not to blame for news of the suicide attempt getting out. Kyle winced at his dad's lack of discretion, but the damage had been done. The word "suicide attempt" lodged into Sheila's head and there was no erasing those words.
"What what WHAT!?"