The Universal Law of Gravitation and Other Stories
Chapter 12: The Play's The Thing – An Unholy Alliance
written by SleepySheep683 - illustrated by FriggingodessCartman glared at Stan's sleeping form; fucking asshole. Just as he'd fallen asleep, Kyle had woken up and now the two of them were left effectively alone in a locked room.
Kyle was still lying on his back, apparently bemused as to why he had Cartman's jacket.
"This yours?" he asked eventually. Cartman nodded, not knowing what to say to the Jew… the Jew… God damn it, he couldn't even bring himself to insult him in his head. Kyle had fucking ruined him.
"Umm, thanks. You want it back?"
"Whatever."
"Okay."
Kyle tucked his hands under his head and stared at the ceiling, clearly oblivious to how Cartman had committed every molecule of him to memory. He knew how he walked – slightly underpronated, and that he jiggled his left leg whenever he was anxious or bored. He knew that he was so skinny he could draw his skeletal structure from touch alone, but he had some lean muscle visible on his arms and chest. He knew he got goosebumps easily, and that he smelled faintly of soap and musk. He also knew that every girl who passed him by glanced at his ass, and that they had good reason to.
In short, he knew more about Kyle than he felt comfortable with, and he knew far more than Kyle would have felt comfortable with.
He felt Kyle's eyes on him, and he didn't have to look at him to read the expression. He just knew Kyle would be looking at him with a slight frown that meant he was deep in thought and wasn't quite sure what to say to him.
To say things were awkward was the understatement of the fucking millennia.
"Are you sure you don't want it back?" Kyle offered again. Cartman considered the proposal; to be wrapped up in the scent of him would be both a comfort and a torment.
"Keep it. We wouldn't want to find you tomorrow morning encased in ice because your pathetically scrawny body can't retain any heat," he snapped, but it was half-hearted; the resigned look on Kyle's face told him all he needed to know. Every insult would be ineffective now, for Cartman had played his hand and been fucking double-bluffed.
"Thanks." Kyle sounded uncertain, as though he were walking on eggshells. Somehow that felt even more insulting. Cartman didn't need handling with kid gloves, he was a bad assed mother fucker who could fucking well take Kyle by force if he really wanted to. Stan was asleep, the cops were silent; it wasn't as though anybody was around to stop him.
He glanced up at Kyle, who was now lying on his front – swamped in Cartman's dinner jacket – with his head buried in his arms. His big, come-and-make-love-to-me-by-candlelight eyes were glancing in Cartman's direction and he knew, deep down, he could do no such thing.
"You know it's okay, right?" Kyle said, his voice muffled by his arms. "Whatever your—"
"Kyle, I've already told you, I'm not gay!" he retorted, and Kyle fell silent. Cartman wasn't sure if he felt pleased or hurt by this.
Kyle turned his attention away from Cartman and towards the bedpost; Cartman felt utterly bereft. Some small part of him ached for Kyle's attention, like a dog begging for scraps, and he hated it. He wanted to claw it out with his bare hands and crush it against the wall.
"What the fuck's happened with you and Stan, anyway?" he asked in an attempt to feed that shameful part of him.
Kyle looked up slowly and shook his head.
"Fine, be like that." Cartman couldn't fathom it. They were having the kind of spat that had to do with unrequited feelings – Cartman was familiar enough with that sensation to know it could drive even those two fags to rage at each other – if it were true that they weren't butt buddies and Stan was dating… No. No fucking way.
Cartman suddenly hated Wendy more than he had ever hated the hippie slut all his life.
Stan fanned himself with his hand as he, Craig, Token, Cartman, Clyde and Kenny crammed into the Tuckers' kitchen, peering through the open serving hatch at the four girls sat around the dining room table with Kyle.
"Man, it's fucking hot in here," Stan gasped, stretching his t-shirt in front of him and wiping his forehead on it.
"Tell me about it," Craig said glumly, his short-sleeved shirt unbuttoned almost to his navel.
"What the fuck is up with your heating, Craig," Cartman grumbled, taking off his t-shirt and allowing Stan to see the rolls of fat jiggle whenever he breathed in deeply.
"I don't know. It seems to get stuck, like, every time Kyle comes over to do his tutoring shit." He glared at Stan as though this were somehow his fault. "Your boyfriend's like some kind of heating curse."
Stan was beyond even bothering to point out Kyle wasn't his boyfriend. Even though he and Wendy were fast approaching their fourth year anniversary – counted from the first date they had until now where they hadn't split up at any point – and even though Kyle had moped over his summer love and made Bebe come so hard she founded a religion around him, Stan knew it didn't matter. As far as his classmates – and even some of the teachers – were concerned, they were an item. Fine. What-the-fuck-ever.
"Yeah," Kenny mused as he peered through the open hatch. "It's got nothing to do with them having an excuse to wear skimpy clothes and make Kyle unbutton his shirt, right?"
Craig raised an eyebrow. "What?"
"Their little panties are wet for him. They are hot for teacher in every sense," Kenny clarified. Craig shoved him angrily.
"Hey, don't talk that way about my sister!"
Clyde smirked at Kenny. "What about your sister?"
Kenny smiled. "Oh, she isn't interested in Kyle."
"Oh yeah? So your sister's special, is she?" Token said with a chuckle.
Kenny shrugged. "Well, she talks to him like he's a normal person, which makes me think she's not interested in him in that way. Plus, I'm fairly certain she had her sexual awakening the summer before last when she watched Stan help me fix up Dad's truck. I don't think Kyle's her type."
"Dude!" Stan felt his cheeks burn hot. Then he felt Craig's icy glare on his back, which didn't cool him down as much as he'd hoped.
Kyle had been tutoring for a few months now, and he seemed to be making pretty good money out of it. Plus, even Stan had to admit; he was fucking adorable when he set out all his diagrams and coloured notes, like a proper teacher. The fact that all of his pupils seemed more interested in trying to clumsily seduce him would have been the funniest thing ever if Kyle's genuine obliviousness hadn't been even funnier.
This was the reason half the boys in their class were hanging in Craig's kitchen watching Kyle's lessons. Well, part of the reason.
"It's just a crush," Craig fumed. "Just an innocent, stupid crush. An innocent, stupid crush that little girls with no fucking taste would have."
Token nodded. "I don't get it. Kyle's a nice guy, but…" He looked around furtively. "He's ugly, right? We're all in agreement on this. It's not an attack on him; it's just a statement of fact."
"A fucking butt-ugly Jew asshole," Cartman enthused.
"Guys!" Stan felt the need to defend his best friend, but as the others looked at him, he couldn't come up with anything convincing. "He's… His other qualities are stronger."
"Right. Ugly," Craig affirmed.
Clyde shrugged. "Maybe someone should get that memo to the girls." He nodded towards the hatch as three of the girls leaned over the kitchen table and fluttered their eyelashes at Kyle.
"Okay, so what kind of fraction is five thirds?" Kyle had scribbled the figure on a mini flip-chart he had propped up on the table so all four girls could see it.
"Have you got a girlfriend?" a skinny girl with dark bobbed asked, as she leant her chin on her hand.
"Not at the moment. Now, what kind of fraction is five thirds?"
"Why not? You're really nice." Ruby Tucker, Craig's younger sister, had a segment of her strawberry-blonde hair twirled around her fingers as she said this. She stared at Kyle as though he were a particularly tasty flavour of popsicle.
Craig was wearing a hole in the linoleum of his parents' kitchen, eyeing them angrily.
"Umm… Thanks. Now, five thirds—"
"Have you got a boyfriend?" Another girl with long platinum blonde hair eyed him curiously, tugging her bra strap back under her sundress. Stan couldn't quite believe this one was only fourteen.
"No." Kyle sighed. "Look, girls; my relationship status isn't going to help you with your math scores." He tapped at the mini-flipchart with his pen. "Five thirds, fraction type, go!" he ordered.
Three fourteen or fifteen year old girls simultaneously sat up and bit their lips. Stan was pretty sure the Tuckers' upholstery dry-cleaning bill had just shot up.
Karen McCormick, the fourth girl who seemed immune to the insanity, quietly raised her hand. "Improper?" she offered and Stan felt she had just about summed up the entire situation.
"Very good, Karen." Kyle looked immensely relieved that somebody was paying attention. "Five thirds is an improper fraction. Why do we can it an improper fraction?"
"Are you Jewish?"
"Girls, let's get through our fractions work. Then we can talk about my religion all you like."
"Stacey just wants to know if you're circumcised."
"Do not!" the dark haired girl turned crimson.
"Is it true it makes you last longer? Jenna Stevenson says it does because your bell-end's always rubbing against your jeans, and she'd know because her sister's friends with Sally Anderson, who's cousin lives in Washington and she blew some Jewish guy from the college and she said—"
"Girls!" Kyle's voice was low but sharper. "Fractions first, dick questions later." He sighed. "Tell you what, let's have a quick break. Go get a drink or something."
"No, we're fine."
"We'll just stay here."
Stan wasn't sure what was the most surprising revelation he'd had today; that Kyle was so staggeringly emotionally retarded he genuinely didn't realise that these girls wanted him to kiss them far more than they wanted better math grades, or that Kyle had kept his temper under circumstances that would have tried even Stan.
He saw Karen roll her eyes.
"I'm going to get a drink. Do you want anything, Kyle?"
"Thanks, Karen. Whatever's fine."
Karen got up, her lithe ballet dancer physique poised as ever. She ignored the seething glares administered by her fellow tutees, clearly jealous at the casual way she tossed out their tutor's first name.
"Seriously, girls. Go get a drink, stretch your legs, whatever. I'm just going to be checking my phone and being kind of boring. I promise I won't start the lesson until you're all back."
The girls nodded and left the table in a giggling huddle. Meanwhile, Token and Clyde were on their knees in the kitchen, silent tears of laughter streaming down their face.
"He doesn't get it. He actually doesn't get it!" Clyde could barely get the words out.
"He is so hot." The huddle of girls had clearly reached the serving hatch and they were within earshot of Stan and his classmates, if not Kyle.
"I know. I'd gargle his jizz any day of the week; and the way he gets all disciplinarian? Goes straight to my clit, every time."
"God, tell me about it! Last night I had a dream about him putting me over his knee and giving me a good spanking, I have never been so turned on! I barely had to touch anything!"
Craig looked ready to explode; his fists balled tightly in sheer rage. Stan assumed that girl had been Ruby. With a collective giggle and the sound of a French door sliding open, they were gone. Stan stared at the serving hatch, slack-jawed.
"Dude, I don't remember girls in our class being that slutty when we were that age!" he said, barely able to believe his ears.
"Don't call my sister slutty!" Craig hissed.
"Maybe they were, just only to older boys?" Token mused.
"They were that slutty with me," Cartman boasted.
"No, they weren't," every other boy retorted in unison.
The door opened slowly; every single boy in the kitchen straightened up and calmed down. Karen walked in gracefully, but started a little when she glanced at the six sixteen and seventeen year old boys loitering in the kitchen.
"Umm, hi," she said meekly.
"Hey, Karen." Every boy stared steadfastly at the floor, apart from Kenny.
"I'm just… just getting a drink," she said, stepping towards the fridge. "Is that okay?" she asked, looking directly at Craig.
"Sure. Of course. Help yourself. Anything you like." Craig was fiddling with his belt loops and appeared oddly jittery. Stan assumed it was for the same reason the rest of them, sans Kenny, did their level best to avoid glancing anywhere near her in Kenny's presence.
Karen McCormick was fucking hot.
Even Stan, who had a super-hot and amazing girlfriend he wouldn't trade for all the Playboy bunnies of the year from this century, could see that Karen McCormick was fucking hot. She was slender, graceful and mind-bogglingly bendy with big doe eyes and a sweetly shy demeanour that implied that she'd not only be virginal but she would idolise you afterwards. Yes, she was fourteen; yes, it made every boy in that room who wasn't Kenny an utterly despicable, deplorable, shameful pervert for having had exactly the same thoughts. It didn't change the fact that Karen McCormick was fucking hot.
While trying not to notice Karen, Stan had unfortunately ended up staring at the cupboard Karen was now trying to reach. She stretched her incredible body up and gave a little grunt of effort which could be construed as sounding vaguely orgasmic if you were a sick pervert – and judging by the way Token, Clyde, Craig and Cartman all immediately stuffed their hands into their jeans pockets, they were. Karen had small breasts and almost never wore a bra, which had the dual effect of making her nipples tantalisingly visible and her descent from her tiptoes to a flat foot creating noticeable movement in the breast region.
Fuck. Stan was going straight to hell. Although Craig was currently gripping the kitchen counter as though his life depended on it, so maybe Stan wouldn't be going first.
-Friggingodess-
Craig prised himself from the counter and tentatively put a hand on Karen's shoulder.
"It's okay. I'll do it." He reached up with no effort and took a glass from the cupboard, looking ridiculously pleased with himself.
"There you go," he said, as though he had just scaled Mount Sinai and returned with some stone tablets. Karen took the glass; Stan saw her fingers accidentally brush Craig's, which coincided with Craig blushing and suddenly becoming utterly fascinated with his feet.
"Thanks. Could… could you maybe get me another one? For Kyle?" Karen looked somewhat nervous and kept her gaze squarely on Craig's right shoulder.
"Sure! Of course! Sure, no problem!" Craig pulled another glass from the cupboard and handed it to her with a winning smile.
"Thanks." Karen set the two glasses on the kitchen work surface, then opened the fridge and bent from the waist to peer in, humming to herself and wiggling her hips in time to the music in her head. Stan had never failed to be impressed by Karen's physical flexibility, although Clyde and Token appeared to be steadfastly ignoring it. Cartman peered with a serious expression, as though he would claim his interest to be academic and detached the second he was pulled up on it. Craig looked as though someone had put a gun to his head; Stan was convinced he could actually see the boy sweating.
Kenny, on the other hand, looked as though he didn't know which of them to knife in the jugular first.
"Craig?" Karen asked in a hesitant, sweet voice, as though she wasn't sure she had permission to use the name.
"Yeah!" Craig replied more eagerly than Stan had known him to reply to anything in his life, ever.
"Have you got any diet stuff? With sweeteners, not sugar?"
"Umm, I think we've got something in the garage…"
"Okay, thanks." Karen spun on her toes and walked out of the kitchen. Craig seemed to come to his senses and dashed up to her, stopping suddenly and stepping back to create some distance between them.
"Wait! I mean… I can help you! If you like!" he stammered, apparently unaware of the look of murder in Kenny's eyes.
Karen smiled sweetly. "That's okay. I'm sure I can find a bottle of diet soda." She skipped off towards the garage.
"Let me know if you need a hand!" Craig called after her. "Or you need help with the bottle; I'm really good at opening things!"
Cartman hung his head. "God damn you're pathetic, Craig."
Craig stared at the open doorway as though he could still see an echo of Karen. "She's really mature. For fourteen. She's a mature fourteen, right?" He glanced around in an apparent search for support. "She's in ninth grade. So, that's really only two years younger than eleventh grade. Even if, you know, some eleventh grade kids are, like, seventeen already." He stared so hard at his Converse sneakers that Stan was convinced he'd burn a hole through the canvas. "I guess I'm just saying, if a guy in eleventh grade like me – I mean, not me, but you know, like me – asked a girl in ninth grade like Karen – I mean, not Karen, but you know, like Karen – to the movies or something, that would be cool? Right?" With what appeared to be a Herculean effort, Craig raised his head to look Kenny in the eye. "Right?"
Kenny unfolded his arms and surveyed Craig coolly. "Sure. I guess Karen wouldn't mind dating a guy in a wheelchair."
"Great! Wait, what—"
"Because I'd break your fucking legs!" Kenny's voice went an octave higher and at least ten decibels louder. Craig stared back down at the floor like a beaten dog; Stan had never known him be so submissive.
"Dude, what the hell's going on?" Kyle was leaning over the serving hatch; Craig swiftly stormed over and punched him in the shoulder.
"Ow; what the fuck, man?"
"That's for giving my sister bad thoughts!" he said grumpily.
"What the fuck are you talking about? I'm teaching her fractions, how's that a bad thought?"
Stan saw Cartman shake his head and mutter the words, "God damn fucking Jew," as he looked out of the window.
"Just… Just leave my sister alone, okay?"
"Kay." Kyle looked utterly non-plussed. Kenny suddenly developed a strange hacking cough that sounded similar to the word ‘hypocrite'.
"So, guys. What did you put for question forty—"
"Shut the fuck up, Kyle!" every single boy retorted. Stan loved Kyle like he would a brother, but Jesus fucking Christ he needed to let the SAT test go. It wasn't even the final one; they got another go in the summer.
"Dude, relax," he said wearily. "There's nothing any of us can do about them, and worst case scenario, we all get to take them again in the summer. Think of it as a practise." Stan felt exhausted; he was fielding exactly the same sort of responses from Wendy as well. He'd banned them from talking to each other all weekend because they were succeeding in getting each other increasingly worked up over the whole matter.
"I can't relax! I think I messed them up," Kyle confessed.
"You didn't mess them up," Stan replied, rehashing the same conversation he'd had with Wendy just last night.
"You don't know that!"
"And neither do you, so just try and take your mind off it."
"Aww, Stan. If you want to take his mind off things, why don't you give you boyfriend a back rub or something," Cartman spat. "Blow him in the bathroom – I'm sure Craig wouldn't mind."
"Craig would mind a great deal, actually," Craig commented nonchalantly.
Stan sighed. Cartman was getting really nasty of late. Sure, he'd always been a dick, especially to Kyle, but ever since tenth grade it had got much worse.
Kyle sighed heavily and ignored Cartman's attack – which seemed to piss Cartman off even more. "Well, how does Wendy take her mind off it?" he asked.
Stan's mind flashed through a series of images, mostly involving Wendy in a state of undress with his hands on her breasts.
"Heavy petting with me," Stan self-censored. "I don't think that'd really help you, though."
"Oh, it would distract me," Kyle replied, "just not in the way I'd want." He glanced at his watch. "Shit. I didn't even get myself a—"
As if on cue, Karen turned up and shoved a glass of cola into Kyle's hand.
"Thanks, Karen."
"Don't mention it." She looked at Kyle warily. "I mean it, don't. Those girls will kill me."
"What?"
When even Karen McCormick glanced at Stan and rolled her eyes, he understood that Kyle's emotional retardation was fast becoming the stuff of legend.
Stan shrugged in response. That boy was going to get himself into serious trouble if he didn't start to recognise when he was being lusted after.
Cartman stretched in satisfaction as he waited in class for their teacher. Normally he'd be pissed off that she was fucking late, as drama was such a coasting class it was worth getting involved in, but Kyle was bending over to try and open a window and Cartman's desk gave him a perfect view of his wriggling ass.
He was over denying it, at least to himself. They were eleventh graders now and had just taken their SAT – or as Cartman liked to view it, their practice SAT, given there was every opportunity to take it again in the summer. Whatever, if he was old enough to be forced to fill in a bunch of tick boxes that apparently defined his ability, then he was old enough to want to sink his teeth into Kyle's perfect ass.
Ever since he'd noticed just how delightful Kyle's ass was, he'd noticed how much girls stared at it, too. He didn't really get why girls were so bothered; what were they going to do with it? It's not like they had anything they could really shove up there, or that they could get a decent angle to give it a good spanking when they fucked him.
"What?" Kyle snapped at him, and Cartman realised he'd been staring a bit too long.
"What do you mean ‘What'? You're in the way of my view, you Jew asshole," Cartman spat back, while surreptitiously sliding his copy of ‘A Streetcar Named Desire' onto his lap.
"Oh, your view of the fucking window? I should have known." Kyle began pacing frantically, a live-wire of nervous energy. Cartman was hit with a sudden urge to grab him and just hold him tightly. He'd feel his heart race against his chest and the tremble of his whole body as he tried to find an outlet for his pent-up energy.
Cartman could think of several outlets. Not that he should ever let on.
"What are you PMS-ing over now?" Cartman sighed heavily. "Boyfriend troubles? Didn't Stan take you out for your anniversary? Your little kindergarten harem not putting out?" Cartman knew that even hinting at Kyle's relationship with his tutees being remotely sexual always pissed him off, even though the fucking oblivious asshole didn't even noticed they creamed their panties for him on a regular basis.
Still, if Kyle was that emotionally retarded, at least Cartman was safe from discovery.
"It's results day," Kyle replied tersely, as though Cartman should know exactly what he was talking about.
"What?"
"The SATs, or had you forgotten?" he spat sarcastically.
Cartman had forgotten, actually. "They're practice ones, Kyle. Chill the fuck out; you can take them again in the summer."
"They're not practise! They count! Colleges can request to see any SAT results you've received, no matter how shitty they are!"
Kyle's distress would have been better than an afternoon jerking-off session last year, but now it kind of worried Cartman. The vice-like grip Kyle seemed to have on his balls nowadays annoyed him no end.
"We'll get them when we get them. Quit being such a drama queen," he mocked, despite wanting to stroke his crazy, stylised ginger ‘fro and tell him everything would be alright.
Before he could say anything stupid, Mrs Langstrom wafted in to rescue him from his insanity.
"On your feet, my dears! It's time to warm up!"
Cartman watched as Stan and Kyle exchanged knowing glances, the pair of assholes. They had to be so in synch with each other, with their little private gestures and their apparent complete understanding of one another without saying a word. Fucking Stan; he had that hippie slut, wasn't that enough? He was fucking greedy, and why was Kyle putting up with that shit anyway?
"Eric? You need to take the ball from Leopold," Mrs Langstrom said kindly, stopping Cartman's fantasy of tying Stan to the old railway tracks and chopping his limbs off one by one.
"Sorry, Ma'am," Cartman said sycophantically, because Mrs Langstrom had been the sole reason he hadn't had to repeat last year. He took the brightly coloured softball and ripped off the first scrap of paper he found.
"Forbidden love," he read out. Fucking great.
"Ooh, thank you Eric." Mrs Langstrom turned to the board and wrote the phrase down. "That'll certainly be intriguing!" When she finished, the phrase on the board read, ‘Giant Robot Donkey Defends Forbidden Love'. The class giggled a little.
"Now, Eric, pass it to Kyle," Mrs Langstrom instructed. "Kyle, make sure you take a blue piece of paper."
Kyle held out his hands in expectation, and Cartman did his best to hand it to him in a way that meant their fingers got to touch. He succeeded and was rewarded for his brief moment of contact with a tingling sensation that lasted well after Kyle read out the words, ‘Interpretive Dance' and everyone groaned.
Throughout the group exercise, Cartman kept his eye on Stan and Kyle. The way they interacted was annoying nonchalant; if Cartman hadn't seen them together last year, he would probably have never guessed. What riled Cartman more than anything was how openly affectionate Stan was with Wendy; the way he flaunted his hippie slut of a beard was just… just… He'd treat Kyle better if he had him. That was the crux of the matter.
After he watched Stan give Wendy a surreptitious kiss on the cheek in front of Kyle, Cartman had to stop himself shaking with rage. He'd be a much better boyfriend than Stan. If he was with Kyle, he'd even be the girl now and then; equality and respect were supposed to be important, right? Well, he was pretty sure that fuckworthy Jewish princess would be enough of a pussy to think so, and Cartman could fake it.
The clock hands drifted closer and closer to signifying the end of class, and people were noticeably restless as a result – fucking hell, it was just some dumb test! Kenny was concentrating, but Cartman knew that his unswerving attention was based around imagining Mrs Langstrom naked. God damn, poor people were fucking gross sometimes.
"Before you go, I need to announce who's been given the coveted role of directing our school play this year!" Mrs Langstrom announced excitedly, and Cartman's ears pricked up. His voting campaign had been nothing short of aggressive – if there was one thing he'd been born to do at school, it was this. The rest of the school had better have fucking recognised it.
"Well, unusually, we have a tie. Eric Cartman and Kyle Broflovski got an equal share of the votes, so I guess we'll have two directors this year."
Cartman felt both giddy and pissed off. He looked at Kyle with a view to glaring at the Jew bastard for stealing his thunder, but he looked utterly bewildered. This pleased Cartman; he had vision, he had balls and he'd just be able to tell Kyle what to do. No biggie. Well, it meant he'd have to spend lots of time alone with Kyle, which felt like a brilliant and terrible thing in equal measure.
The bell rang and the entire class rushed to pack their things and leave; the anxious babble was grating. Cartman instead darted out of the drama room eagerly thinking about what play they should put on. Could they adapt ‘A Clockwork Orange'? What about ‘American Psycho'?
Damn, he was a creative genius.
"Umm, ma'am? Can I have a word?" Kyle asked Ms Langstrom after waiting patiently for everyone else to leave.
"Of course, Kyle. What is it?" She didn't even look up from her marking.
"I think there's been a mistake in the votes."
"Oh, no. It's perfectly above board," Mrs Langstrom insisted.
"It's just that I never even campaigned and everyone else who wanted to direct made sure they… Hold on; what do you mean ‘above board'? I never asked that!"
Turned out that Mrs Langstrom wasn't a very good actor – something Kyle found rather ironic. She slammed her marking down and met his stare. "Okay, Kyle, there was no joint place. Eric won by a significant margin and good for him! He's imaginative, terrifyingly so, but you know and I know where Eric's imagination will lead the play if it's unchecked."
Kyle couldn't argue with this, but he was amazed that somebody else had even noticed.
"So what, I'm his babysitter?"
"You're the only one in the whole class who has any kind of influence over him," Mrs Langstrom explained. "Please, just go along with it."
Kyle was surprised both by her desperation and the fact she was convinced Cartman reacted to him in any way besides insulting his religion, his appearance, and his friendship with Stan.
"Who, me?" he asked.
"Yes, you. He seems to care about your opinion, which is a miracle given it's not his," she added.
Kyle glanced at his watch. Time was currently measured not by hours and minutes, by hours and minutes until their SAT results were available. Right now it was seven minutes, and the sooner he got away from Mrs Langstrom, the sooner he got his results and the sooner this nightmare of waiting was over.
Still, shepherding Cartman into coming up with an entire production which wouldn't make the audience vomit seemed worse in comparison.
"Kyle, I'm begging you!" Mrs Langstrom insisted. "Do you want me to get on my knees and plead for your help?"
"Not really."
"Because I will!" She actually got off her seat and crawled in front of him. Six minutes and now a reasonable risk someone would pass the open classroom door and get the wrong idea.
"It'll look good on your college applications," Mrs Langstrom added and the deal was cinched.
"Alright, alright," he conceded, and Mrs Langstrom got back up onto her feet.
"Thank you, Kyle," she said with utmost gratitude in her voice – as though Kyle could really have said no. "If you need a letter of recommendation to Harvard, just let me know."
"Huh?" Then Kyle suddenly understood. "Oh. I wasn't really considering an Ivy League college."
"Mrs Langstrom frowned at him. "Why not?"
Kyle shrugged. The truth of the matter was that he had Stan had pretty much decided – without actually discussing it ever – that they'd go to college together. He figured if he tried to explain that to Mrs Langstrom she'd think it was dumb.
Maybe because it kind of was.
He glanced at his watch again. It was time.
"Gotta go!" he said, almost stumbling over himself to get to the school office.
"Good luck!" Mrs Langstrom called after him.
By the time he'd run the distance of the school to the office – and been told at least three times to stop running – Stan, Kenny and Cartman were holding unopened envelopes.
"Where have you been, you asshole?" Cartman grumbled. "We're only waiting because you've been whining like a girl who's trying to have her period."
"Come on, dude. We said we'd open them together," Stan said more kindly.
Kyle dashed over to the school secretary, who handed him a large brown envelope, her expression neutral as she did so. Did she know the results? Did the teachers know? Or were they as much in the dark as he was?
He walked over to Stan, Kenny and Cartman; in the corner of the room, he noticed Wendy dissecting the results with Bebe and Red.
He took a deep breath as he reached the others. "Well, here goes."
"Just get it fucking over with, you pussy," Cartman moaned.
"Alright, alright!" Like ripping off a plaster, he tore open the envelope. For a brief, insane moment he worried that his decision to go ahead and do the tests on Saturday like everyone else might actually have enraged God, but then he saw his scores. Not too shabby. Not too shabby at all.
"Well? What did you get? Stan asked, and Kyle handed him his results sheet.
"Jesus fucking Christ, dude!"
"What, what did he get?" Cartman was trying to prise the results sheet out of Stan's hands.
"I thought you didn't care?" Kyle pointed out.
"I don't; I just care about beating you," Cartman announced with a malicious grin.
"He got seven hundred and ninety-eight—"
"Ha!" Cartman pointed at Kyle. "I beat you, I beat you! I beat you, you asshole!" he sang triumphantly. "Nine hundred and two! That's, like, three hundred and seventeen more."
"No it isn't," Kyle said wearily.
Stan glanced at Cartman with mild contempt "—Seven hundred and ninety-eight in Math, seven hundred and ninety-five in Critical Reading and seven hundred and ninety-six in Writing." He glanced up at Kyle. "Jesus fucking Christ, dude!" he said once again. "Those scores are insane!"
"Maybe there's been a mistake?" Kyle peered at the results sheet to see if any discrepancies stood out.
"What's that, like, twenty-three hundred and eighty-nine? Wow; put's my seventeen hundred and ninety-three to shame." Stan was smiling, but there was an edge to his praise.
"Hey, seventeen hundred and ninety-three's a good score," Kyle replied, recognising the unspoken tension that had come between them. It was nothing to do with jealousy – he knew Stan was pleased for him – but it had everything to do with the unspoken College Question.
Wendy wandered over, having apparently noticed their open envelopes.
"Well?" she asked, snaking an arm around Stan.
He showed her his results. "You beat me, obviously, so I owe you dinner; but Kyle beat you. Does that mean you owe him dinner and I can go in his place?" he teased.
Wendy peered over Stan's results sheet and read it upside down. "Well done, honey," she said, kissing him on the cheek afterwards.
Then she glanced at Kyle's results. "Oh my God, that is so unfair!" she ranted in mock-rage – although Kyle detected a sliver of truth to her words.
"What did you get?"
"A measly two thousand, three hundred and two," she joked.
"Oh, that's awful. How will you get into college with those scores?" Kyle said sarcastically.
Wendy smacked him hard on the arm. "Shut up… Anyway, it's still average for Yale," she said merrily. "Which one are you thinking about attending?"
Kyle glanced at Stan, who was clearly a little hurt. He wondered if Wendy had ever broken the news to him about her Ivy League aspirations before now. Kyle figured he must have guessed – even he had cottoned onto that one; it seemed to be her driving inspiration during their more difficult AP study sessions.
"The whole college application thing is so far away," Kyle stalled. "Hey, Kenny – what did you get?"
"Why are you even asking? He's fucking poor white trash," Cartman said between laughter.
"Nineteen – oh – four," Kenny replied nonchalantly, and it was worth every hour of free tuition Kyle had given Kenny just to see the look on Cartman's face.
"Awesome!" Stan appeared genuinely pleased, but Kenny shrugged it off.
"It's nice, but I'm hardly sponsorship material," he replied neutrally. "We'll see."
"What the fuck? You're poor and your parents are fucking alcoholics – that's like the first two questions on the application," Cartman sneered, and Kyle figured in a really odd way that he might actually be offering encouragement.
"Have you thought about Harvard?" Wendy asked, gently grabbing Kyle's arm. "I mean, it depends what you want to major in, but they have amazing Medical and Law courses, and the reputation is second-to-none…" Apparently she had taken it upon herself to organise his college applications.
"I'll have to think about it," Kyle said, neatly changing the subject with, "I doubt my folks will be so impressed; Ike took the SAT last year and got twenty-three hundred and ninety."
"Isn't he eleven?"
"Yeah. Well, he was ten when he took it."
"Wow, your little brother really is a genius," Stan commented.
"I know," Kyle replied, feeling a little swell of pride. His little brother was indeed a genius; unfortunately, like most child geniuses, he was… well, he had his problems. There were a group of bullies at his old elementary who were just asking to be dumped head-first into the nearest skip the next time Kyle caught them.
"Well, now we've got the Geek Olympics out of the way, I've got a play to select," Cartman announced loftily. Kyle sighed; he had a fuck of a job ahead of him.
"We've got a play to select, Cartman," Kyle pointed out, "and you aren't even slightly worried about your SATs?"
Cartman rolled his eyes. "Some of us don't get our panties in a bunch over a three hour book of tick boxes. Not that you'd understand, you fucking Jew – your bitch of a mom—"
"Don't call my mom a bitch, you fat fucking moron!"
"—Your. Bitch. Of. A. Mom – is probably ready to disown you if you got less than two thousand—"
"What plays did you have in mind, Eric?" Kenny asked. Kyle had noticed Kenny often played diplomat nowadays; it might have been forever ago, but that girl – or whoever – he met on that road trip had really affected him. Maybe for the better.
"Well, I was considered penning an adaptation." Cartman was clearly warming to his subject.
"Good, that sound's interesting," Kenny agreed.
"Yeah, I'm leaning towards ‘American Psycho'—"
Kyle held up his hand. "No."
"Oi! Who asked you, you dumb fucking Jew?"
"Cartman!" To Kyle's surprise, Wendy appeared livid.
"Firstly—" Kyle help up his SAT results – "clearly not dumb. Secondly, no. I am co-director and I'm saying no. Not happening."
"But—"
"No."
Cartman stuffed his hands into his pockets and glared at Kyle. "This is so fucking typical of you Jews. You're the reason movies are nothing but remakes and robot explosions."
"Oh really? And what, pray tell, would your adaptation of ‘American Psycho' have consisted of? Go on, pitch it to me!" Kyle folded his arms and awaited Cartman's rejoinder.
"Well… well! It would have been a thoughtful representation of man forced into a stifling framework created by society!"
"And you would have represented this how?"
"With a bunch of people being chopped up with an axe and two prossies being fucked at the same time while being filmed. Then getting hacked up with a chainsaw." Cartman stared defiantly as he said this. Kyle simply ignored him, ignoring Kenny's tittering and Stan's face palms.
"Fine, fine. I'll pander to your tiny, culturally retarded brain." Cartman said wearily. "How about ‘The Human Centipede – The Musical'?" He emphasised his point with jazz hands.
"No." Kyle felt somewhere in the back of his mind that this should have bothered him more beyond the obvious, but the feeling disappeared as soon as it had arrived.
"Alright, what about, ‘Jon Benet – The Rise and Fall'?"
"No."
"How about ‘Fritzl's Basement'—"
"No!" Kyle sighed. Fucking hell, this was hard work. "Maybe you should consider adapting something on the school reading list, or a classic, you know?"
Cartman glared at him with utmost contempt. "A play about something on our reading list? Who the fuck would want to see that?"
"It's just a matter of picking the right one." Kyle frantically searched his mind for anything that could be construed as bloodthirsty. "What about ‘Lord of the Flies'?"
Cartman snorted in derision. "Please. A bunch of kids are left alone with no adults, so their society goes to pot and they end up sacrificing each other? Like that could ever happen. See, ‘American Psycho' is rooted in reality, Kyle."
"What about ‘The island of Doctor Moreau'? Marlon Brando starred in the film version, and you could so fill in for Marlon Brando," Kyle replied with a smirk. He knew he shouldn't bait Cartman, but when he was being an utter dick – which was effectively a constant – Kyle figured he deserved everything he got. No-one else would call him out on his bullshit, apparently intimidated by something Kyle couldn't see.
Cartman turned crimson with rage. "Whatever, Kyle. That has nothing relatable either; have you ever met a crazy old geneticist?"
"You mean besides the one that lives up the road? No, I guess not," Kyle retorted.
"What about ‘Dracula'?" Stan piped up and Kyle could have kissed him – well, maybe not, given he knew what that was like already, but he figured he might go through the motions out of gratitude.
"Yeah! Dracula! It has sex and violence and guilt; there's even a bit of ham-fisted feminism that serves to patronise the female lead." He felt, rather than saw, Wendy glare at him.
Cartman looked up at him as though he was Santa and he'd just brought him Megan Fox. "Really?" he whispered with hope in his eyes.
"Absolutely," Kyle replied.
Cartman suddenly looked away and fiddled with the hem of his t-shirt. "Well, obviously I'll have to verify your assertions, given you're a Jew and prone to spewing lies from your forked tongue—"
"Fine; you go and check on Wikipedia, then let me know what you think," Kyle retorted lazily. He had never known Cartman to read willingly, although he did seem to make exceptions for anything that held the promise of being utterly offensive. Still, this was a start. If Cartman could be swayed on this, maybe there was hope for this school play after all.
However, Mrs. Langstrom still owed him a massive fucking debt.
Cartman hurried to the computer room, his mind ablaze. Did he and Kyle just agree on something? Obviously he needed to check he was being truthful about this ‘Dracula' book but Cartman had seen enough vampire movies to be confident that he could turn it into something cool, even if Kyle was taking out of his tight, pert ass.
The thing he couldn't get out of his head was the way Kyle had said, ‘You could so fill in for Marlon Brando'. He'd seen ‘A Streetcar Named Desire', thanks to it being their drama study and really? Marlon Brando was fucking hot. Was Kyle suggesting he was hot?
He found the Wikipedia entry and saw that it was all about some crazy dead guy who wanted to buy a castle, eat a lawyer and slowly possessed and killed the bitches of the men who tried to stop him. Nice; Cartman liked his style. He even had three hot bitches that he got all pissy about when Jonathan tried to bang them. A quick look at a few Sparknotes essays suggested it also showed all the men being scared of horny women and trying to destroy them. Fucking awesome! Kyle hadn't been lying; this would be a perfect school play!
Wow. Kyle had hinted that Cartman was hot, he'd been honest about this Dracula thing; couple that with all the time they'd be spending together and maybe… maybe it was worth a shot. He might not understand Kyle's horrific Jewness, but he could accept it; wasn't love meant to mean you took the bad with the good anyway? He could show Kyle how he felt, how he'd be so much better that Stan. Fucking Stan, who paraded Wendy about like a trophy right in front of Kyle like he didn't even matter, who didn't even acknowledge their apparent relationship in public. Kyle deserved someone better than that, and Cartman was that man.
With a smile, he began gathering research, while silently thanking whichever assholes voted for Kyle as a potential director.