SekritOMG

It was just Clyde's luck to end up in detention on his birthday. It would have been ironic, maybe, if Clyde had been having the best day ever, only to find himself detained after school. Likewise, if Clyde had been waiting to get home for some birthday celebration, that would have been annoying. But the sad fact was that not a single person had remembered his birthday, and if they had, they hadn't mentioned it. He had only been 20 minutes late to English because he'd slipped on an empty tampon wrapper in the hallway, hit his face against an open locker, and ended up visiting the nurse. Even with awkward bandages plastered against his cheek an

At 7:15 the alarm went off, blasting its flavorless noise into Craig's ear from where it lay on the nightstand. Nightstand, not really — more like an old army trunk Kenny had found in some abject street, taken home and stuck next to the bed. On it sat a pile of yellowing papers, the gaudy papier-mâché sphere-like thing that Craig hesitated to call a lamp (although it did light up), and Craig's cell phone, his de facto alarm. Kenny himself didn't believe in alarm clocks. So Craig rolled over, grasping for his phone, just one more makeshift thing in his life that was supposed to fulfill one purpose and was slowly proving itself

It started in college, when the mold growing under the window ledge in Stan's dorm room kept making him sneeze. "I've never had allergies before," he sniffled one afternoon, right after sneezing all over Kyle's anthro notes. "Do you want a Kleenex? I can wipe that off for you." "You know what, no thanks." Kyle made a disgusted face, balling up his snotty sheet of lined paper. "I'll just Xerox from that guy who looks like he's in the Trenchcoat Mafia. No big deal." Kyle said this in a particular way that ensured there was no doubt in Stan's mind that it was a pretty huge deal. "I don't want you talking to him," Stan replied, wiping his nose

I. When her daughter was in seventh grade, Sharon decided to go back to work as a receptionist for a plastic surgeon whose office was on Main Street. Her young son, Stanley, was 8 by then. Randy felt that was too young for Stan to have his mother out all day. "But he's in school full-time now!" Sharon protested. "Do you know what it's like to sit here alone all day?" "I don't know," Randy grunted. "But I'd sure like to have every single day off." This was not a new argument; they'd had it before. "I never have days off!" she yelled. "I cook, I clean, I shop. I do the laundry. I drop the kids off at school. I pick the kids up from school!"

They made fun of him at school, and he wept. Now, Clyde was of the opinion that a 17-year-old boy shouldn't cry, not ever, but he did and he couldn't help it. Not even Stan and Kyle, with their longing glances and lunchtime handholding under the cafeteria tables, understood. Everyone thought they were so adorable, their love so quaint and misunderstood in just the right way. Clyde didn't know what was wrong with them, and he didn't care. He knew what he wanted but he couldn't talk about it. So he cried in the telephone booth where you could make a call for a nickel, but because they all had cell phones no one did. Then one time he excused hi

Stan was not a dreamer, not in the literal sense. His dreams were all ethereal. They happened during the daytime, during boring meetings, while he was supposed to be updating the company clientele databases. He let his eyes gloss over the letters and numbers and looked into the future: little two-story house, picket fence, dog. This number-crunching stuff was toxic to him. In his fantasies, it was always springtime in South Park: snow on the ground, birds building nests in the rafters under the roof ledge at his childhood home. He liked to think about snowmen in the yard, and a fire in the fireplace. It wasn’t that he disliked the city &

How could Stan ever forget Kyle’s high school summer job? As assistant librarian, Kyle spent June, July, and August from ages 13 to 17 hauling around the returns cart, reorganizing the card catalogue, and reading to howling children during storytime. It paid $6 an hour, and at the end of every summer, Kyle bought one video game and put the rest into the savings account his parents had opened for him after his bar mitzvah. The South Park Public Library had three computers — all of which were running Windows 98 — a hamster, the complete Vampire Chronicles, and minimal funding. The place was usually deserted, and often during thes

It was somewhat satisfying to have Tweek sitting on the couch by himself while Kyle paced back and forth, interrogating him. Stan just stood against the wall, arms crossed, seemingly fairly upset, but Kyle didn’t have time to worry about him right now. “All this time,” Kyle said slowly, thoughtfully. “We were getting angry at Craig.” He stopped. “And it’s really you, isn’t it?” “What? Me?” Tweek put his hands on his head, obviously meaning to grasp his hair, of which he now had very little to pull at. “No way, man! I don’t do anything with your store! I just own it!”