Work Text:
Seventeen is a curious age for a young girl. Woman—lady? The difficult of defining what you even are at this age epitomizes the problem at hand. It's when the veil of existentialism begins to descend over your life, and for Wendy Testaburger, it's when she decides she needs to rebel. To do something. She's been itchy inside her skin for the months since her birthday, stuck and bored and able to only wiggle her toes, figuratively, and what she has access to via Bebe (beer and pot) seem so trite. She wants to—start a revolution, maybe. Fight in a war between good and evil. Or perhaps she just wants to drop some acid.
Whatever she wants to do, as unknown to her as it is to others, she figures there's one person in South Park that can help her scratch this itch: Kenny McCormick.
She hasn't seen Kenny since sophomore year, when he dropped out of high school and started working nights. The lack of Kenny, though she is aware of his continued presence in South Park, has made Wendy weirdly obsessed with him. She's convinced she can see flashes of him at parties, blond hair and orange jacket, though he hasn't worn a parka since fifth grade. She used to ask Stan nearly every week for an update on Kenny, but that caused Stan to start asking questions about Wendy's feelings regarding Kenny, which made her blush and stop. It reminded her of middle school, of Esther, who used to develop grandiose crushes on boys she had not and would not ever talk to, making herself miserable in the process. Wendy took pride in the way she never did that, in the way she refused to let men have any control over her. At the first sign of trouble Wendy would cut them out; it happened to Stan in the eighth grade when she caught him looking at gay porn and to Token when he cheated on her with Red a few months ago. So, no, Stanley, she does not have a crush on Kenny. Wendy is just acutely fascinated.
She's at the McCormick doorstep anyway, knocking on the door, tugging at the hem of her shirt. Loath as she is to admit it, she's a little afraid of what's going on inside. Wendy's been raised in relative privilege, what with her doctor father and her teacher mother, their nice house and pricy organic food. She is sympathetic and willing to rally for the impoverished, but she's never faced poverty itself so head-on. This is what she's thinking about, hating herself for it and trying to convince herself that she's seeking out the gritty realities of life and that is what will be inside, when Kenny answers.
She gasps involuntarily, which makes her feel like more of an idiot. When—when did Kenny get so tall? He's towering above her. She cranes to see his face. He's gotten handsome, too, dark eyebrows and deep eyes, and she's just about convinced herself it's not Kenny when he speaks and she recognizes his voice, which broke before all the other boys', all the way back in the fifth grade. "Uh. Hello?"
"Hello," Wendy says, proud of her own voice, of the way it remains strong no matter what is going on inside her mind. "May I come in?"
"Why?"
Wendy doesn't know the answer to that question, actually. So she says, "For a visit?"
"A visit." Kenny frowns.
"I just wanted to see you. Since I haven't in a while."
"Since I dropped out," Kenny corrects her, and the way Kenny says that—so casually—makes Wendy's heart hurt.
"Yeah," Wendy says. She rubs her hands together, a little cold, though it's warm outside. "So. Can I come in?"
Kenny lets her in and Wendy doesn't see what she was expecting, which was a cockroach-infested hovel with syringes and dirty clothes littering the floor. It's tidy, though dingy, and there's a television that's playing cartoons at a soft level with a toddler sat in front of it on a clean baby blanket, her fingers in her mouth and a bow in her blonde hair.
"That's my brother's daughter," Kenny says, when he notices Wendy looking at her when they walk into the living room. "Her name's Sapphire. Her mom's in jail."
"That's terrible," Wendy says, still eyeing Sapphire. Babies make her nervous.
"She was a crack baby," Kenny says, shrugging. "Kevin's at work. My mom watches her during the day, but I just woke up, so I'm watching her now." As if to illustrate this Kenny walks over to Sapphire and hoists her onto his hips. She grins and wraps her chubby little arms around Kenny's neck, squealing something that sounds like knee into his skin. This makes Wendy even more nervous; she doesn't say anything and Kenny walks over to her with the baby on his hip, saying, "So what do you really want?"
Wendy winces a bit. She feels humbled, and making her request seems silly. But, well, she puts her minds to things. "I'm a little bored," she says. Kenny raises his eyebrows; Wendy continues. "With everything. I want to do something—dangerous." Her voice drops and she blushes.
"And I'm dangerous?" Kenny smirks and jostles Sapphire.
Wendy's blush intensifies but her voice doesn't waver as she answers, "Yes."
"Well, I can't disagree, but I don't have much to offer. The baby, see." Sapphire is staring at Wendy, her fingers still in her mouth, blue eyes wide. How original; Wendy wonders if Kevin or the mother named her. "I get off work at four."
"In the morning?" Wendy balks, though it's a stupid question.
"Yeah. Meet me by the railroad tracks. Unless you're scared." The shark-like smile Kenny gives her is at contrast with the baby on his hip; Wendy's feeling dizzy and weak in the knees, not sure if she regrets this decision yet or not.
She knows what Kenny means by the railroad tracks and goes to meet him there. It's a popular spot for delinquents, out back from an old abandoned convenience store, the dirty while wall covered in graffiti and empty cans of all sorts littering the ground. Wendy feels wrong, waiting for Kenny there at four in the morning. She'd considered dressing for the occasion but thought Kenny might laugh at her, so she's dressed as usual, collared shirt tucked into jeans and messenger bag with her wallet, chap stick, Band-Aids, and other necessities inside. Kenny still might laugh at her; who knows. She checks her phone and sees it's four on the dot, realizes she doesn't even know where Kenny works.
Kenny is there at four-thirty, parking a pick-up truck right next to where Wendy is leaning against the wall and reading news articles on her phone. "Is this dangerous enough for you?" he says as a greeting. He's wearing some sort of uniform, baggy and gray, but moves with a certain masculine swagger.
"Is this all we're doing?" Wendy asks, confused.
"For now. Come here." Kenny walks to the railroad tracks and lays down perpendicular to and on them and Wendy follows. He looks up at her from the ground and gestures a spot beside him. "I know you think I do a lot of hardcore shit, but this is about as dangerous as it gets for me," Kenny says once Wendy has laid down. It's uncomfortable. The bars dig into her back. "I do this every night after I get off work. Look at the stars, clear my head, whatever. A train comes by every once in a while, so."
Wendy is quiet. "Trainspotting," she says, finally.
"Trainspotting," Kenny agrees. "Without the heroin." He turns his head to grin at her; she smiles and laughs, nervously, back. She had expected Kenny to be on some sort of drug, she realizes. She remembers the times when his parents were busted for meth and their mugshots appeared on the front page of the paper.
"So," Wendy starts, but Kenny hushes her by putting his hand over her mouth. His skin is dry; his hands smell strongly of detergent; something shoots through Wendy, lightning in her veins.
"No talking," Kenny whispers. "Just trainspotting."
It becomes something Wendy does every night, too, even on schooldays, waking up so early and heading out to the train tracks in her precocious little Honda. They do not talk, just lay on the train tracks and look at the stars. Curious, Wendy looks up constellations online, tries to spot them to herself, and learns how to tell the future through the stars. On occasion she can feel a sentence begin to form, itching to tell Kenny her discoveries or to read him his horoscope, but then she remembers the heavy heat of his hand on her mouth and the words die in her throat. It is unlike her, but what did she seek him out for if not to do things that are unlike her? Wendy keeps the meeting a secret from everybody for no discernable reason.
The first time a train comes they hear it before they see it, of course, and Kenny moves fast, lifting Wendy with ease and depositing her a safe distance away. It leaves Wendy breathless. She moves herself from then on, but that first time lingers in her mind, the ease with which Kenny had moved, had lifted her as if she weighed no more than a feather. Does he take all the girls to the train tracks? She dismisses the question as soon as it comes to her.
A month and eight days into their routine—not that she's keeping track—Kenny does not show up. It's a Saturday. Wendy sits on the train tracks with her knees to her chest and watches the sunrise, curling her hair around her fingers, biting her lip, worrying. Kenny claims he isn't mixed up in things more dangerous than this; was he lying? Has he been killed by a drug kingpin? Or has he simply grown tired of their time together, expecting something more from her? Even though he was the one that told her to be quiet in the first place? Why had Wendy ever let a man silence her? Let a man take control of her? Why had she allowed it? With the sun fully in the sky and fully in her eyes, with her heart full of all the worry she can take, she goes to Kenny's house.
This time, it is Kenny's mother who answers the door. The toddler—Sapphire, that uncreative name, forever stuck in Wendy's head—is in her arms. Kenny's mother has wide, tired eyes and a pockmarked face, but there is a remarkable beauty about her, something Wendy has never before noticed. Certainly not in the front page mugshots. She recognizes Kenny in that shielded beauty, all her worry coming back to her.
"Have you seen Kenny?" Wendy asks while his mother stares at her.
"Not since he left for work," his mother says. Sapphire lets out a cry; Kenny's mother readjusts her hold, and Sapphire's head drops on Kenny's mother's shoulder, her little muscles relaxing. "Who're you?"
"A friend," Wendy says, and the word is exhilarating. "I was supposed to meet him. He didn't show up."
"Oh. That happens sometime. He'll come around. Do you want to come in?"
Wendy peers around Kenny's mother's shoulder, into the house. It is the same as she left it the first time: tidy, dingy, the television on, children's cartoons bringing a small amount of life to the darkened room. Wendy does not want to come in.
And then Sapphire turns around in her grandmother's arms and reaches her chubby hands out to Wendy. "Dee!" she says gleefully, grabbing at Wendy's face as Wendy leans back out of instinct. "Knee!"
"Knee?" Wendy looks at Kenny's mother. Carol, the names come to her.
"That's her word for Kenny," Carol says. "You know? Ken-knee."
"Oh." Wendy looks at Sapphire, then at Carol. There is no resemblance between them.
"Please, come in."
This time, Wendy does come in. Carol leads her to the kitchen, offers her a glass of water that Wendy denies. There is a high chair covered in what looks like crayon and marker scribbles at the table, but Carol does not put Sapphire in it, instead sitting across from Wendy while bouncing the baby in her lap.
Unsure of what to say, Wendy starts with, "So…Kenny just…disappears sometimes?"
"Yeah." Carol looks down at Sapphire. "But he always comes back!" The hope in her voice hurts Wendy.
"Where does he go?"
Carol shakes her head. "Don't know. I don't think he gets up to trouble, but." She continues to look at Sapphire, in her own little world, entertaining herself with things only she can see. "The McCormick men, you know. They get up to their trouble."
"Kenny doesn't seem like that," Wendy says, unsure of whether she's comforting herself or Carol. "He's…" she falters, a million unfounded adjectives bubbling up. "He's responsible," she says, at last.
"Knee talks Dee," Sapphire adds to the conversation. Wendy looks at Carol for interpretation.
"You're Wendy," Carol says, realization dawning across her somber face.
"Oh, sorry, I forgot to introduce myself—"
"No, no. You're Wendy. Kenny talks about you, 'cause Sapphire likes you. You wanna to hold her?"
Babies make her nervous, but Wendy accepts Sapphire anyway, holding her at a literal's arm's length. "Do you know where Kenny is?" she asks the baby.
"Knee go bye-bye," Sapphire says, big blue eyes cast downward, and now Wendy can see the resemblance between her and her grandmother. The McCormicks share the same sad expression. "Knee die. He be back soon."
Something about what Sapphire says disturbs Wendy deeply and severely. She shoves the child back to Carol and stays around for only a few more minutes, trying to be polite despite how rude this family makes her, then rushes out of that house. She goes back to her home, to her bed, her safe haven of privilege and normalcy, and goes back to sleep.
And, of course, she dreams about Kenny. He comes to her wearing all white, wings on his back, a literal fucking angel. He takes her by the hand and leads her through the night sky. They do not talk out loud, but telepathically, and Kenny shows her beautiful, terrible things, things she forgets upon awakening. She bolts up in bed in a sweat, shaking, her head swimming. A single thought comes to her: I am in love with Kenny McCormick.
Through the next few days she tries and fails to shake off the feeling. She goes back to school, her head still in a fog, unable to concentrate. She heads back to the McCormick house and only finds those ghosts, Carol and Sapphire, and not Kenny. It scares her; she leaves. She goes to the train tracks and has to carry herself away from the train, which bothers her for the first time. She reads Kenny's horoscope, and her own. The planets say there is a change coming. She crosses her fingers and believes.
The next night when the headlights from Kenny's pick-up truck illuminate the graffiti on the wall of the convenience store, Wendy just about jumps out of her skin, convinced she's seeing a ghost for real. But when Kenny walks up to her and she puts her arms around him he is solid and real, smelling of detergent, beautiful as he was in her dream.
"Warm welcome," Kenny laughs, pulling back.
"I thought you died," Wendy says, and she realizes how ridiculous it sounds when it comes out of her mouth.
Kenny shrugs. "I did," he says, but it passes through Wendy, never to be comprehended. What does pass through to her is, "I ran into a difficult situation."
"Oh." Wendy blinks. "So you lied to me. You are involved in something dangerous."
"No, no." Kenny takes her hand and leads her to the train tracks. Wendy feels light, and also like the Wendy in the Peter Pan story, her lost boy on the end of her arm. "It's just something that happens. I can't really explain."
"Well, why not?"
"You wouldn't understand." Wendy sees the sad McCormick expression flash across Kenny's face, but he seems to be good at suppressing his emotions, at wearing a poker face, because he's back to some sort of neutral and cocky expression in a millisecond. They lay on the train tracks and Wendy brushes her hand against his cheek. He is thin, looking as if he never got the chance to fill out in full, and Wendy can feel his cheekbone under her thumb. Kenny puts a hand over hers. "Nobody ever understands."
"I came to you because I want to understand," Wendy says. "I want to know what it's like to live authentically."
Kenny sighs and rolls on his back, away from Wendy, which wounds her. "Authentically. You're lucky. You're so lucky. And I don't just mean 'cause you're rich, or whatever. You should just go back to your house, Wendy. Back to life. You don't need me."
Wendy wants to be unable to argue with him. She wants to agree with him. What does she have from Kenny other than a half-formed relationship with a toddler, uncomfortable, scarce visits with his mother and a few dozen's worth of silent nights spent staring at the stars? Yet somehow the nights they have spent together on the train tracks became imbued with a deep comfort unlike what Wendy has ever known. She has ironically arrived at an unprecedented level of safety in her pursuit of danger. She wants to agree with Kenny, but she can't, because she does not want to lose this, whatever this may be, in its precious beginning.
"Where do you work?" Wendy asks, instead.
There's a beat, Wendy clearly catching Kenny off guard. "I'm a night custodian for a company that works out of Denver," Kenny says. He looks at her again, dull curiosity in his eyes. They're not blue, like Sapphires, but a interesting shade of light brown, sparkly as the stars above. "Cliché, huh?"
"Is that why you smell like detergent?"
"You noticed how I smell?"
"It's hard to miss."
They laugh, and they move closer, their noses touching.
"I got jumped by some guys in Denver," Kenny mumbles. "On my way to pick up my paycheck. They took my phone, my car, my wallet."
"Oh," Wendy says, feeling as dumb as she always feels around Kenny. Or perhaps not dumb, but caught off guard, constantly out of breath and surprised. Their noses are still touching; Kenny's breath becomes her own as they talk. She thinks about the breath of creation as she lays a hand on his stomach to feel his breathing.
"I had to walk back," Kenny whispers. "It took a while."
Without further ado, Wendy kisses him. Fast and hard. She rolls on top of him and tries to communicate something she cannot quite voice, some sort of desperation and apology both, pent-up desire and words. Kenny responds, and he kisses nothing like the way she would expect: in delicate, tender nips, his hands still on her back, his breathing even. He kisses like he is tending to a garden.
When they finally pull apart, and when Wendy stares into Kenny's eyes, Wendy says, "All those nights. I just wanted to talk."
"Why didn't you?"
"Because you didn't let me," Wendy says, her voice quiet.
"So?"
Wendy shrugs. "Your guess is as good as mine."
It takes far longer than Wendy expects to unravel Kenny's many layers, to crack the ice of his façade and go swimming inside him, but Wendy's never been one to shy away from a good project. Their nights on the train tracks do not cease, but they do turn into something Wendy likens to mutual therapy sessions, hours and hours spent talking to each other, telling each other everything. Again and again Kenny tries to communicate to Wendy his reality, his deathless death, and again and again he fails, but Wendy always feel that she is on the verge of some greater understanding with him. As if he is an exquisitely crafted book, with true meaning to revealed after extended analysis. Meanwhile, Wendy tells Kenny about her boredom, about her dislike of South Park and all of its inhabitants, about the way she thought she would see him out of the corner of her eyes, the way in which she quietly missed him, possibly for all of her life. She tells him how dumb and trite she feels around him, how he's the first boy to make her feel this way. And, slowly, she stops feeling that way, realizing over and over Kenny's depth and her own and how they align. The planets tell of a pleasant collision between two equal forces.
In mid-summer, when they are spending more time together than apart, when the days are long and they bring picnics to the train tracks, Kenny disappears again. But by now Wendy has learned both her and Carol's version of the truth: Kenny is responsible and Kenny will be back again with a reasonable explanation. Kenny does not seek out the danger, but the danger finds him, and this is not what Wendy had asked for at the beginning of it all but it is what she accepts. So she sits on the train tracks every day alone, so she watches the sunrise, and so she reads the stars, takes comfort in their reassurance that Kenny will return, that they will pleasantly collide, that they will breathe life into something new together.
And return Kenny does, though bearing a gift: Sapphire.
"Mom's sick," Kenny says before Wendy can ask after his whereabouts. "I figured we'd be here for a while, so." The baby is asleep, her head on his chest, her small body dwarfed by Kenny's broad frame.
"Where have you been?" Wendy asks, not even caring about the presence of the baby. Sapphire's gotten a little bigger, her hair a little longer, and Wendy wonders, absently, if her speech has improved to multiple syllables yet. If she can fully say Ken-knee.
"Same shit," Kenny says. "Different guys." He sits on the train tracks this time, Sapphire stirring in his lap but ultimately returning to sleep.
"You should report them!" Wendy wants to hold Kenny so badly, but the baby is there, a barrier. It distresses her.
"It's no use. The police don't care about guys like me." Kenny's face pinches up and does not relax. Wendy extends a hand to him, cradles his face, their favorite gesture of affection and easy to perform even with the baby in the way.
"Oh, Kenny," she says, because she knows at this point there is nothing she can do. "It won't be like this forever."
"True," Kenny says. "You'll leave me one day." He smiles at her, then looks down at Sapphire. "Her, too."
It pains Wendy to say what she says, pains her very deeply, but she goes with it anyway. "I am not going to leave you, not by choice. I don't care if I get stuck here forever—you make it bearable. Kenny. I love you."
Perhaps it's the urgency of her voice that awakens Sapphire, because she turns to Wendy, her fingers in her mouth and her eyes blasted wide. Wendy has to admit the kid is cute, or maybe she's just become used to her, or maybe Wendy's just going soft. Whatever all the results of these possibilities may be, Sapphire says, "Wendy loves Kenny? Yay!"
Kenny laughs and drops his face to Sapphire's head, losing his mouth in her hair. His laughter grows stronger, though muffled, and Sapphire starts to laugh too. Wendy looks on, thinking that she should feel like an intruder and instead feeling included, like she belongs. So Wendy starts to laugh too, even though she wants to cry, because her worldview has been torn apart so many times by this boy and this baby in front of her, because she feels like she is always running from an unseen train, but it's okay because Kenny is carrying her and their future is in the stars above them.