High school. The whole thing could be blamed on High School.

Though in reality, what couldn't be blamed on that life-changing educational facility known as South Park High? Trivial things, I'm sure, but there's nothing trivial about the way his eyes flickered like night-shine, the almost too-careful way he strolled next to me, even down to the very tone he used when trying to get some sort of study notes from me. This...this thing was not Kyle Broflovski. The DNA is the same, but there was no way in hell that this was the boy I knew before.

Four years ago.

Four years and it all went to shit.

*~*

"Tch. What do we care about your precious little grade point average? All it's going to bring you is painted Barbie-and-Ken pseudo happiness." He flicks his red-streaked hair, takes another drag of his cigarette, and continues to look at us like we're the all-black wearing oddballs. "Us," at the moment just happens to be Tweek and myself. The kid's twitching no better than usual, probably made worse by the fact that I was a the closest thing to a friendly face he knew.

And let's face it. I don't even really like the kid.

"Kyle!" He says my name like it's God; the only thing he can really cling to besides his wild straw-colored hair is the fact that I'm right here with him. "Ghn, let's just go! They don't want us here!"

And by them, he means the four black-hidden chain-smokers, also known as our Goth Kids. The youngest one can't be much older than Ike, but he's puffing away like the seasoned veteran he is. The girl, Henrietta I believe her name to be, sits parallel to him, fiddling with the stereo and chipped black fingernail polish. Red streaks just flick again, and he's answered by a nod from the taller, hook-nosed, curly-haired goth. Yeah, they don't want anyone here Tweek.

"They have what we need," I say in exasperation. "If anyone knows about crap like scary folk stories, it's gotta be them." Perhaps they were a bit miffed that I was speaking like they weren't there. But they could be ticked off for any other reason in between as well, so it wasn't like I was particularly doing their pride damage. They'd brush it off. "We can't find what we need in the library. Help us out."

Why Tweek and I had been partnered together was a mystery. Everyone had been partnered up with their usual buddies, except for us. Stan and Craig were kind of pissy about working with each other though, but I guess I kind of got it better. After all, I could have been stuck with Craig instead of Tweek. Though annoying, at least he's somewhat more human than that stoic bastard. And for this partnership, the blonde and I had to research old folk legends from the Native American culture.

Guess who didn't like sharing their cultural ghost stories?

"Fine," he says, more interested in ridding the two interlopers from their hallowed smoking grounds. How the goths would know this kind of information was sort of a mystery on its own, but they had proven to be fine, almost whimsical sorts of informants in the past. There was no reason to doubt their use now. "Find a way to pay for it and I'll tell you what I know."

He thinks he has me. He thinks he's got me pinned until I can find some way to please him. But they're so easy to predict, really. My hand reaches into my jacket, I hear Tweek shriek something about a gun, and pull out a pack of Camel Crush. Fresh still in the little plastic packaging that always sticks to your skin from the static. Menthol junkie he was, he raised his eyebrow and caught it easily as I threw it to him.

I'm a Broflovski. I do my homework.

"Cigarettes?" I hear Tweek squeak, "where did you get those!? Oh man, we're too young to be here; we're gonna get caught!" Nervously he fidgets with his own hands, anything to distract himself. To that I do feel bad, patting at his back very cautiously as not to alarm him. If anyone could calm him, it certainly wasn't me. He just grew quieter, more fidgety, practically shaking worse than a leaf in a storm.

We ignore his outbursts. If they haven't been caught by now there was a good chance that this would stay secret. As for how I had acquired the little sticks of cancer...well, Cartman did have his use from time to time. Even if it was for something as stupid as cigarettes at sixteen. Red just takes his time opening them up, flicking the butt of his cheap Ace brand cigarette to the curb as the white-and-teal patterned stick replaces it. He moves his fingers to the butt, feeling around for that little crystal of menthol flavor. We hear the click of it being squished miserably in a prison between tobacco and cotton filter, the flick of the lighter refusing to light quite right. Eventually, as the sentient beings always do, we win. And he claims his victory in a puff of minty smoke.

The other three are gracious when he remembers to toss them their own little shares of the profit. Heck, he's even in a gracious enough of a mood to offer two our direction. Tweek, hadn't it been for me, probably would have forced himself in some sort of fit of delusion of pressure to take it, but I raise my hand and shake my head before he can even give a little vocal spasm. "We don't smoke."

"A shame," he says between another puff. "Alright. Yeah, I know about a few old ghost stories. I don't know why you're asking anyways. It's fairly easy to pick up this sort of stuff."

Easy, perhaps, if you focused on death for a great deal of your life.

"Just start off with the basics. We have a few myths, but nothing to really explain them. Jersey Devil?" I motion for Tweek to pick up his pencil and his notebook to jot down the notes we'll need to compile his words into some sort of grade-worthy English report. Hopefully I'll be able to decipher the transcript later. Red gives a shrug, staring me down with hazel windows.

You can tell by the gleam in someone's eyes if they enjoy something or not. The eye is a dull, glassy orb with no shine to it when you don't have someone's interest. That's not what I saw here. I saw something actually alive in him, growing on the satisfaction that he could share his knowledge with us and actually be interested in what he was saying. Everyone has a passion. And his was born and bred with his lips.

"Jersey Devil. Or Leeds Devil, both names for one creature. I assume you already have what it looks like down; that's not too hard for a simpleton to find on the internet." He puffs, Tweek scribbles. I watch and wait. "There was a tribe that can be traced to the origins of it. The Lenni Lenape." The words roll off of his tongue like they were meant to be. And for a moment, this is more than a lesson on folklore. This is a lesson on Red's life.

"L-Lenni Lenape. Got it!" The hollow sound of Tweek's pencil scribbling away in abused fashion forces me back to reality. Keep focused. Had to keep Red talking; we only had until the pack was gone and at this rate there was little time.

We rattle off more names from the list. Wendigo. Coyote. Stories from different tribes, such as the Cherokee's "Origin of Medicine," The Apache's version of a Creation story, Inuit's Origin of Light. The more we bring up, the brighter Red's eyes shine, and it's to the point where I think that the Goth might have something human in him after all.

"Last one then," I say with a sigh. It's been a while, smoke fills the air causing Tweek to cough slightly and worry about death from breathing it secondhand. Two cigarettes remain, and both of them are for our crafted storyteller. "This one was tricky to find. Skin-walkers."

He raises his eyebrows. He's surprised. "Oh. You found out about those? I didn't expect you to." His head seems to be swooning from the information buzzing in his brain as well as the nicotine in his synapses. He's feeling good, we're getting the most we can out of him. It's a win-win situation. "Rather nasty little things. Mostly Navajo in origin. Quite possibly the most evil thing that plagued them. Who knows what to expect when your baby falls sick. Is it true illness, or is it a skin-walker poisoning it in its cradle?" He smirks. This tale he must enjoy telling, and the thought sends chills down our spines.

I'm not the only one to feel it. Tweek's gone quiet, actually, twitching less and focusing. Red's friends have stopped pretending to be uninterested, sending silent watching eyes to him. He's on the stage now, hidden actor. Even his friends, I find, have gone from pretending to be uninterested to giving him glances and stares, eventually just giving up on trying to remain mysterious and watch him take true form. A storyteller, a poet. He's got us wrapped around his words tighter than his lips on his cigarette.

"They're witches. Worst kind of folk. You don't speak of a skin-walker, lest you invite them to your doorstep. They rape nature, skin her children, and pervert them to their own bodies. They curse their tribesmen. They rape the bodies of the dead. They can be anything, though they mostly stick to wolves, coyotes, bears, the like. With but a whisper they can have the voice of anything, from a crying infant to a whisper you don't think you heard...oh, but you did. You just hope it was your imagination." Oh. You sneaky devil. You're getting off to watching us watch you. "They are, if not to be explained in more than one word, evil."

"H...how do you become one?" Tweek's voice is surprisingly smooth; he's as interested as I am. Understanding how we became interested was a mystery to ourselves as well as the people around us. We just...we just were. There was no other way to explain it.

"It's a four day ceremony," Red begins once again, glad for audience participation. "But you have to damn yourself. You have to kill your closest blood relatives. You have to steal their skins." Instantly my mind flashes to the images of Ike and my parents. A scary thought; I push it aside before I discover what path it wanted to take me down. "You have to be initiated by an elder skinwalker, or at least someone who knows the incantation. You're inducted then as a skin-walker; a yee naaldlooshii. You're invited to their Witchery Way. You're taught how to make corpse powder. Taught how to take the skins of the animals around you and graft them to your body. Your eyes glow like a beasts in the dark, always the color of red coal." Another minty puff joins in with the pollution of its forefathers.

I'm curious. "What else?"

Tweek's pencil isn't scribbling I notice, it's taking time in writing these details down. Probably word for word repeating every single word. "The legends dabble in everything. They're charmers. They're monsters. They are nearly immortal, powerful. Some say that to kill one, you need only know who they are. Some say the only way to kill it is to dip your bullets in white ash. Fire at the heart, blackest thing on them." He aims at me with his pointer finger extended, thumb sticking up like the hammer of a gun, and pretends to fire. Had I been in a better mood, I'd have pretended to die. "Some say that they cannot enter the home of someone that they don't know or haven't been invited to. The legends are all different at this point. Some say that they can even read your mind."

He's taken his time; the cigarettes are gone. Our brief meeting is over, we both feel it but for some reason we don't want it to end. We want to know more, we hunger for more. This too he seems to take into account, giving a nod and returning to ashy knock-off brand cigarettes. "That should be enough for you. Have fun in your Justin Timberlake wonderland."

"C'mon Tweek. Let's go." He's back to being jittery, giving a light squeal of surprise as I grasp his arm and pull him away. But I can feel it then, feel how interested he was as well. What was he thinking? The same thing as me? Why, why would something that sounded so horrible perk our interests?

But I've lost the nerve to bring it up as he shrieks about how he's late for dinner, which somehow becomes a story leading up to his father shoving him off in a crate to be shipped to Brazil with all the other child whores.

Damn it, Tweek.

*~*

My coffee's bitter. Not that it wasn't usually bitter; that's just the way coffee tastes. But ever since we've teamed up on this project, I haven't been putting any sugar in my coffee. Kyle's diabetic, right? Oh Jesus, it wouldn't be fair of me to have that around him! Creamer was okay though, right? Yeah, I could have creamer. I could have all of that as long as it was kosher.

Coffee's kosher, right?

"Tweek, gimme a hand," Kyle says to me, and I hold back the urge to yell out about the difference between kosher and non-kosher caffinated drinks as I shuffle from the small pile of books and shakily hover over Kyle's shoulder. "Read this report over, see what you think."

What I think? Oh God! He's trusting me? Me!? Jesus Christ! I might have repeated at least one of those short phrases out loud; I'm not sure due to the amount of anxiety currently bubbling up in the back of my throat like bad bile. But he says nothing as I read. I'm rather thankful for that; it's hard enough to concentrate when I can feel him there just judging me like everyone else. He's judging me, right? He is like everyone else, right?

"Ghn! It looks fine to me so far..." I continue reading, expecting more where Kyle has it end. "Y-you forgot something."

His hand reaches under his green ushanka, scratching at red curls of hair. I know this because I can see it out of the corner of my eye. Oh God, did I confuse him? "Did I? I got everything down Tweek. Right down to current spottings for the creatures."

No, no, that's not what I mean! "Ah, what about the skin-walkers?" I want to clutch at something in nervousness, and it takes me a moment to realize that I am clutching at something; the material on Kyle's shoulder is being attacked by my antsy fingertips. But he says nothing, and in fact he acts like I'm not even molesting him in the slightest bit of way! "You didn't...erg, you didn't even put them in the report!"

There it was again. That sort of calming chill that rippled down my spine as soon as I thought about it. Was it sick to be fascinated by such a horrible tale? I couldn't help it! Ever since we'd been told that tale, I couldn't help but think about them. I dreamed about twisted things gathering around my window, red eyes glowing and trailing like the night lights of cars. They scratched, they cried out, they screamed my name.

And I'd wake up in a cold sweat. But I wasn't afraid. I felt...invigorated.

"We already have enough from the others to give a decent oral report. It's just too much anyways. Stick with the softer stuff."

We've gotten pretty close over the week due to this project. I'd rather be with Craig right now, and I'm sure that Stan or Kenny would have been the first option before me, but there's a change in the air between us. Suddenly it doesn't matter that my coffee is hateful to Judaism, or that my taste buds are intolerant to Kyle's sugar-free universe. There's something in Kyle's voice that screams that I'm not alone in my dreams, something that I'm sure not even paranoia can bring about from normal conversation.

My paranoia also has a habit of making me tail the people I get to know, and I know exactly where Kyle gets those Camel Crush bribes and how often he's gone back to the goth kid to try to know more. He's interested, I'm interested. Maybe he thinks...oh god, maybe he thinks I'm afraid to ask?

"What did he tell you?"

"Pardon?"

I stumble over my own tongue, craving caffeine in the worst way possible. But something in my mind has overcome my usual trigger; has softened my voice and given me focus like nothing else. It's scary, frightening. But it happens. "The kid. You give him a pack a day to try to learn more about them, don't you?"

"What the hell Tweek? Are you spying on me!?" He looks offended, but I can tell that I've hit the truth. Well, I hope I have. I'm not very good at reading people. Perhaps I had hoped to see that I was right in the way he was internally fumbling over something; were they words of explanation or just attempts to hold in more horrible-sounding words? "...yeah."

"Any-ack-luck?"

Kyle takes his time to look at me, and all I see is a green gaze that could rival a clever cat. For a moment I imagine them in the dark, imagine him prowling around with a grin and a red glint to his eye. Perhaps I'm just a bit obsessed with the whole idea over the week. Maybe I'll get over it. But not with the way that Kyle's looking at me, cautiously thinking something in that head of his that I just can't unlock.

"He won't tell me anymore. Sorry." The tone is defeated, and Jesus! He looks just as disappointed as I feel. "He acts weird about it. Today at lunch he didn't even take the cigarettes. He just...acted like he was afraid."

"Afraid? Oh God, what could he be afraid of?!" My heart pounds in my chest as Kyle swings away from his computer chair, standing up even to my height. He might be lucky to have a few inches on me, but let's face it. Kyle Broflovski and Tweek Tweak are not the most masculine-looking boys in South Park High. We're short, we're scrawny, and it's at this time I realize how similar we actually could be, given the situation.

He crosses his arms, thinking again and leaving me to total silence. It would be total, anyways, if I could keep little nervous sounds from escaping chapped lips. "I don't know. But I think we should stop talking about them."

"Them?" I had to ask. If not, only to just hear him say the word once more.

At least he's willing enough to say it. "The skin-walkers. I don't know. It feels...well, it's not something that we should feel this way about." We? Ah, the pressure! He knows I feel it too! Wait...so I'm not crazy? I've never been so relieved and confused at the same time while still looking like I was going to have a heart attack and die right there. Kyle places his hand on my shoulder. "Look. Let's keep this between me, you, and Red back there. With all the crazy stuff that's happened before over the years, I don't think it's a good idea to look further into it. It'll just be our thing we never speak of."

Our thing? If it had been for anything else but a secret to keep, I probably would have felt giddy and special. The feeling that came was a sort of neutrality to it all; I didn't twitch but nor did I smile. Just thinking about them was...calming.

And we were both calm.

"O-okay," I said slowly, almost forcing myself to say it with a spasm because I felt too relaxed. "I guess so." I felt a sort of bond between us then, something that was very small but very unbreakable.

"Good," he says with a sigh as he leads us to the door of his room. "Now forget the studying. We'll be good for tomorrow. I know you're dying for a pot of coffee anyways." He starts going for our jackets downstairs, and when he's not looking I kind of smile.

We get along a lot better than I thought we did.