Kyle's parents argued far into the night. Sheila's shrieks reached such a piercing pitch that Ike sought refuge in Kyle's room.
"I'm still mad at you," Ike made clear after he pushed his way next to Kyle under the covers.
"I know. I'm sorry."
"You embarrassed me in front of a girl," Ike moaned.
Although when Gerald finally did arrive home and knocked on Kyle's door, intoning, "We need to talk," Ike shouted back, "He's sleeping! Go away!" But only because Ike was even more pissed at his father than at Kyle.
The house calmed down for a few hours. Gerald settled on the couch downstairs and everyone had managed to get some sleep. Kyle's sleep, though, was interrupted by a vision of Stan burning his arm with a cigarette lighter with his drunk shaking hand.
Kyle woke up gasping and he immediately scrambled for the phone. He accidentally jostled Ike, who let out a half asleep "puh".
"Nightmare. It's fine. Go back to sleep," Kyle ordered. His dad still occupied the living room couch, so Kyle would have to go outside for any privacy.
Once he sneaked outside, he punched Stan's number. Three rings cycled through before Stan answered. "Wha?"
"Stan, are you okay?"
"Kyle?" Stan pronounced with a sleepy slur. He was drunker than Kyle ever remembered him being for a long time.
"Yeah, it's me. What's going on?"
"Dunno. You called me."
"Do you want me to come over?" Kyle asked reflexively, before he remembered coming over was much more of an ordeal now that Stan had moved to the weed farm.
"You can't. I'm too far away from everything. I hate this place." Stan started crying.
"Stan?" Oh, shit. Stan hadn't cried over the phone in a long time either. "I can ask my mom to bring me over later today, if you want."
"Today?"
"It's like four a.m., dude."
"Shit, I have to get up in an hour. I'm so done with this place."
"I'm sorry if I woke you." Kyle knew he hadn't awakened Stan, but he did sound exhausted.
"'S alright. I wasn't asleep. Would it be so bad if I just burned down the whole place?"
An eerie feeling stirred in Kyle's gut. "Yeah, that would be bad. You wouldn't want anyone to get hurt."
"I don't care. They're all assholes."
"What about Sparky?"
"No," Stan finally admitted. "Sparky's not an asshole. You didn't really mean it when you said you wanted to come over, right? Because you said you think the farm's disgusting."
"I'm sorry I said that," Kyle said. "For the record, your old house would be just as problematic. And Sparky's not so bad."
"Why's it problemic?" When Kyle could not formulate an acceptable answer right away, Stan filled it in for him. "It's my dad, isn't it? You saw him do something embarrassing."
"Um, kind of. Look, it doesn't matter. I can deal with it."
"Jesus Christ, is this my dad's plan? To turn me into a loser?"
"You aren't, Stan. People like you. You know that. Even the Goths like you and they're impossible to please," Kyle consoled him. "I'll come over later today."
"Don't bother." With those belligerent last words, Stan hung up.
Kyle tried calling back, but it went straight to Stan's voicemail.
Oh, fuck. Kyle had really screwed this up. He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to cast his senses out Stan's way, but so far, he had only been able to do that when someone was in the same room or very close by. He could sense what everyone else in his house was doing — sleeping and simmering in anger, mostly — but beyond that he got nothing.
But then, if Stan was doing something really extreme, he would still see it, right?
He returned to his room and lay down at the end of the bed, still clutching his phone and trying to give the pretense that he was going back to sleep in hope that it would jog another vision.
After another hour, when Stan had said he was supposed to get up, he tried calling again. Again, no answer.
Kyle was in such deep concentration that he nearly jumped out of his skin when his dad found him outside. "Kyle, is everything all right?"
Kyle's immediate impulse was to retort that everything was fine, except it wasn't. Stan wasn't fine. Stan might hurt himself again, and Kyle could not just ignore it. What if something really bad happened? Something that Kyle would have been able to stop?
Would it be so bad if I burned down the whole place?
Kyle could not let that happen. If Stan burned down the farm, he would self-destruct for good. No one would be able to save him them.
"Stan's upset," he finally told his dad. He stood up and started to edge back to the house. "I can ask Mom for a ride to the farm."
Gerald noticed Kyle's less than subtle evasive body language. "I'll drive you," he offered. "Your mom won't want you to go. Not after what happened at dinner last night."
"Nothing happened." Immediately he regretted saying it. His dad had only been speaking the truth. He was sick of everyone overprotecting him, though, and acting like lying to him was doing him a favor.
The last thing he wanted at that moment was to take any favor from his dad. But Stan needed him, and Kyle had little other choice but to say yes.
Stan finally blinked awake after a heavy but too short sleep. He glanced at the alarm clock next to him, and immediately shot out of bed. Too fast, his head protested. The contents of his stomach pitched dangerously and he made it to the bathroom in time and hurled into the toilet.
He tried to capture the memory of what he did last night after he guzzled down a full six pack of beer along with a couple of flaskfuls of whiskey. He had swiped the beer from his father's shopping bags, as it was only one of many alcoholic beverages Randy had purchased for some big sales event he had planned over the weekend. He meant for that six pack to last longer than one night, because he always made sure that he had something available for emergencies. His emergency rations were disappearing too quickly. He had to be more careful from now on.
Stan brushed his teeth and did whatever else he could to dispel any sign of drink or vomit from his appearance, and then ran downstairs. As he passed Shelley in the kitchen, she told him, "You don't have to run. I covered your chores."
Stan turned her way, staring at her in disbelief.
"You're welcome, turd," she said, before disappearing upstairs.
"That was nice of her," his mother said at the kitchen. "Be sure to thank her. By the way, Kyle's here."
"What?" Stan verged on panic. He recalled talking to Kyle on the phone the night before. Shit! What did he say? He hoped Kyle did not start thinking he was suicidal or anything just because he started drunkenly blubbering on the phone.
Stan moved to the front door. He saw Kyle cautiously bend down to pet Sparky, while Gerald cautioned him not to, because Sparky might bite. As if Sparky had ever bitten someone in the three years since the Marshes adopted him. Kyle had never been that comfortable around dogs — he was almost afraid of them, and not surprising, given that his parents constantly telling him that any slight movement would result in a bite — though he slowly warmed to tolerating Sparky.
"What are you doing here?" He asked.
"Hi, Stan." Gerald greeted. "Your father and I thought you boys might want to spend some time together on your free day."
"Is that okay?" Kyle turned his attention from Sparky to Stan. He downplayed his worry, but he could not come close to matching his father's cheerful expression.
"I guess. It isn't necessary though, and I'm sure you have better things to do." If Stan sounded angry at the sudden imposition of Kyle's company, that was because he was angry. Kyle had not needed to come at all. Stan was fine. He would be fine once he remedied the alcohol situation, that is. He hoped that Kyle had not made a big deal to his parents about coming over here and gotten them all wound up about nothing, like he tended to do.
"Oh, Gerald." Sharon materialized behind Stan. "I don't want to keep you too long, but I have some questions." She smiled down at Stan and Kyle. "Why don't you boys go inside?"
"Thanks Dad," Kyle said, giving a perfunctory smile.
"No problem, kiddo. See you later tonight."
"Come on," Stan ushered his friend in impatiently. Once they got to the safety of his room, Stan said, "I've gotta shower. I'll be back in a few. Don't move anything," He ordered, recalling how Kyle had removed all the hidden stashes of alcohol for Kenny's mom. "You're not going to find any hidden bottles or anything."
"Stan-"
"I'll be right back." Stan needed more time to prepare himself for this. For acting normal and not like the spaz he must have been over the phone.
At that moment, Shelley passed by him again. "Geez, Stan, are you always this much of a dick to your friends?"
"Shut up. Don't you have to go to school?"
He hated them all. Why did he have to get stuck with this family? Except for Sparky, of course. Think about Sparky. Nobody else really cared about his dog: Sharon thought he was a chore and Randy and Shelley were too immersed in their self-centered lives. What would happen to Sparky if Stan ever died? Big Gay Al would probably take him in.
He returned to his room. Kyle was on his phone, and Sparky had curled up on the floor at the foot of Stan's bed.
"You really didn't have to come," he said.
"I wanted to." Kyle turned off his phone and put it away. "What's up?"
"I'm afraid to ask, but what is my mom asking your dad for?"
Kyle's expression instantly told him he wasn't going to like the answer. "My medication."
"It figures." Stan swiped his hat and jammed it on his head. "My mom would love to find something wrong with me so she can put me on pills." Stan became aware of his hands shaking severely, and his stomach started gurgling. He rooted in his desk for a granola bar.
"Haven't had breakfast yet," he explained hastily. "I'm going to get some water."
Once downstairs, he grabbed the first beer can he laid eyes on, and gulped it down along with his granola bar. Thankfully, the house was empty, with Randy still tending to the crops outside and Sharon having left for work. When he went back upstairs, he found Kyle browsing through the labels of the CDs Stan planned to download. He had been amazed to find out that the public library still had a lot of 90s stuff, and took full advantage of the collections. The librarians didn't even care if he was downloading it as long as he didn't try to resell it or something.
"Want to listen to something?" He asked.
"If you want. By the way, Cartman just got the Friday the 13th video game. He says it's more fun when more people are playing it. Are you up for it?"
"You want to go to Cartman's house?" Stan asked.
"I don't mean right now."
"But you hate Cartman." Kyle hating Cartman was one of the fundamental rules of the universe, as far as Stan was concerned. "Are you sure those pills didn't change your personality?"
"They don't work like that." Kyle's eyes strayed back to the stack of CDs. "I still have to make an effort. The pills just make the effort more possible."
"Yeah, but why are you making an effort? I know you guys were better friends back when you were doing Cartmanburger, but that ended a long time ago." Stan had never fully forgiven Kyle for abandoning him when he was in that deep depressive phase.
"Not exactly," Kyle said, exasperated for some reason. "He just doesn't bother me as much anymore now that I understand him better."
"Really." Stan could not even begin to figure out what that meant. Kyle hurried to defend his reasoning anyway.
"It doesn't mean that I always agree with what he does. Just that I understand better why he acts the way he does. Besides, weren't you sick of us always fighting?"
"You still fight."
"Yeah. About surface stuff."
Stan tried to understand how one end of this (Cartmanburger) linked to the other (being nicer to Cartman). He still did not see the connection. Why couldn't Kyle give him an answer that made actual sense for once?