Chapter Text
"You're not real," I say, running my tongue over the gap in my mouth. I lost a tooth earlier, and while I was afraid that I swallowed it along with the lunch Mrs. Sheila packed, but it was stuck in the skin on my apple. Kenny says that apples were supposed to be crunchy, but he wasn't real either.
"Oh, fuck, I'm not real?" Tweek jitters, sitting on the couch next to Kenny. Kenny is just grinning from ear to ear, like always. There is always something to smile about, he says. I force a frown, just because.
"No, you're not," I cross my arms and look back at the TV in the basement. Mrs. Sheila says the basement TV room was a good place for me to play, and I like to be alone for at least a little bit. "You died," I over enunciate the word as an ad for toothpaste plays on mute. "Your daddy killed you with his gun."
"I, nnnn, he didn't kill me," Tweek, who wasn't real, says. "He shot me in the arm. It hurt, but I didn't die."
"You're a liar, too."
"Someone's in a bad mood," Kenny chuckles and my cheeks burn. "Tweek used to play dolls with you, remember?"
"I don't care if he played dolls, he's not real!" I shout, jumping off the couch and stomping toward the dollhouse Mrs. Sheila got me for Christmas. Or it was for Hannakuh? She says I don't have to celebrate Hannakuah if I don't want, and she puts up a tree and everything. The doll house is a two story, just like Mrs. Sheila’s house. My old house is more like the Barbie RV she gave me for my birthday.
I have to admit that I like the Dream House better.
"I'll, gah, I'll play dolls," Tweek says, getting off the couch and following me into my space. "I can only be one doll at a time, which sucks."
"Did your arm get broken before you died?" I ask, looking in the bin of Barbies. There are five in the box, plus two Kens, three Kelly's, and a bunch of clothes. Mrs. Sheila made most of the clothes herself. The hems on the store bought clothes are not appropriate for little girls and the clothes don't need to be so tight. She says that we need something called decorum. I'm not really sure what that is, but Barbie dresses are all the same, even if my Barbie's don't have their knees uncovered.
"I don't want to talk about it," Tweek says, picking up a Ken with brown molded hair. It isn't brushable, which was lame, but with only one hand, it's fine. Also, he isn't real, and I'm trying to get into the habit of not carrying what pretend people think. My doctor wants me to, but more importantly, it's what Mrs. Sheila wants. Mrs. Sheila packs my lunches and draws a smiley face on the fruit cup, not the doctor.
"Does dying hurt?" I slide red shoes onto a blonde Kelly with pigtails. Mrs. Sheila helped me cut her hair, so she'd look like me, and she even took a red Sharpie, which I am not allowed to touch, and marked a line on her cheek. We are twins.
"How would I know that, man?" He tries to make the doll walk but ends up dropping it and cursing.
We are not supposed to curse in Mrs. Sheila's house. She does not like that. Not that she punishes us, or at least me. I get a firm talking to and sometimes she gets disappointed, but she leaves talking about grace and forgiveness.
She talked to a guy named Abraham who I couldn't see when I told her that Kenny said ice packs were for pussies. She ends a lot of our conversations by asking him for stuff.
There's a little bit of what my teacher calls a double standard, but otherwise, it's good here. I can't talk to Kenny, but she asks Abraham with help with almost everything. She even asked him for help as ghost Tweek walked up our driveway and into the house. She closed her eyes, too.
"You died is why," I glare at him.
"I want to be a kid if you're going to be one," Tweek huffs, dropping the Ken doll again. "Why aren't, nnn, aren't there any boy kids?"
"You're dead so you don't have a say," I look at the sling on his arm and stare. It is not polite, but I am curious. Why would a dead person choose to have a sling in the afterlife? Kenny was all broken, at least according to Mr. Gerald, and he still looks normal as he sat on the couch. Tweek must have been a freak.
"His dad shot him, and you're going to be a bitch?" Kenny laughs, tucking his hair behind his ear.
"No one is talking to you!" I shout.
"I didn't say anything," Tweek mumbles, recoiling, then wincing as he tries to tuck inward. His sling flaps, like the dumb bird Kevin brought inside after it fell out of a tree. Dad had said if a bird wasn't smart enough to fly on it's own, it deserved to die, and no one should help it. When Kevin helped it anyway, Dad grabbed it out of his dresser drawer, clenching it in his fist. He threw it outside, and it flapped for a little bit in the air, before cracking against the concrete.
It didn't flap after that.
Tweek looked like the bird did, right before it hit the ground.
"That's not a good story, Kare-bear," Kenny sighs. "Think of a good story."
"I'll think anything I want to think. It's my brain, I own it, not you. Not my fault Tweek looks like a sad bird," I snap, smoothing out doll Karen's hair. "I'm not sorry I thought it. I don't have to be sorry for my thoughts, Mrs. Sheila and Mr. Gerald said."
"I look like a bird?" Tweek asks, looking down, and then at his arm. "I guess, nnn, there might be worse animals to look like. I could look like a slug, or a turtle, or like the neighbor's goddamn dog. I hate that thing, it just barks and barks, man, always barking." He waves the doll in the air as he speaks, his hair flopping in and out of his face as he animates his story. "I guess it's not my neighbor anymore," Tweek sighs. "Whose our neighbor?"
"Tell him about Sparky, I bet he'll do another fucked up puppet show." I smile as Kenny talked, even though, according to my doctor, I am not supposed to engage. It's my brain, and I can do what I want, right?
"Stan has a dog. Sparky is a good boy, though."
"One time Sparky bit Cartman in the nads," Tweek laughs, struggling to bend the doll in half with just one hand. "Me and Stan and Kenny gave him hot dogs after that, like the whole kind, straight from the fridge. They were too slimy, but," Tweek twitches in on himself as I stare in horror, "but Sparky liked them."
"He's allowed to talk about me, you know," Kenny said from the couch. "He was my friend."
No one else on the planet is allowed to talk about Kenny. Kenny is my brother, not Tweek's. Tweek is dead and he's not even bothering to talk with Kenny. He's rude, for starters. No one else, besides sometimes Mrs. Sheila talks about Kenny. The doctor and Mrs. Sheila, but mostly me. I am the last person to talk about him, not Tweek, the weird kid.
"He's not," I argued. "He's not allowed to talk about you. You're my brother and no one ever talks about you, especially not when talking about private areas and hot dogs. It's worse than the church ladies, Ken."
"I don't like the church ladies, either," Tweek says. "Mrs. Broflovski says I don't have to go anymore. I might go to Hell, but at least no one will tell me how sorry they are."
"No one is sorry," I say with a sneer. "Mrs. Sheila says they just want to gossip because they're petty." I don't call her Mrs. Broflovski because it's too hard to say, but Tweek, three years older at eleven, can say it like it's nothing. "She said that God knows what's in your heart, and that's how he knows if you deserve to go to heaven or not."
"Jewish God seems cool," Tweek says with a short nod. "Catholic God is annoying. He just wants you to feel bad and give money, and I don't have any money and I already feel pretty bad."
"'Cuz you're dead, right?" Got him, I think smugly as Kenny rolls his eyes in my direction. He is watching TV like it was a naughty video we aren't allowed to see, glued to the screen, looking up only to be annoyed. In these moments, where he is just as annoying of a brother as he'd ever been, it's hard to see him as pretend.
"I'm not dead!" Tweek shouts. "The doctor said he might have to cut off my arm, but I'm not fucking dead! Stop saying I'm going to die!"
"Are you two alright?" Mrs. Sheila calls from the staircase. "I ordered a pizza and then I heard all this shouting. Do you want me to come down there? Do you need some help sorting out a problem?"
"No, Mrs. Broflovski," Tweek yells up the stairs, "thank you."
"Alright then, play nice."
The door creaks closed, and I sigh in relief. Mrs. Sheila does not like me talking about death in her house, not even a little bit. "You could have got me in trouble," I say, as Tweek grabbed his Ken doll. The fact that the boy in front of me is probably real dawns on me, too. Mrs. Sheila only talks to people that are real, besides Abraham.
Tweek is certainly not Abraham. I don't think he's going to make Mrs. Sheila's life easier like she asked. He grins a bit as he walks the doll through the house, using his thumb to pull open the oven. A little light comes on and he seems impressed that there's a fake fire in the fake oven.
Abraham would be cooler than this, I am pretty certain.
"If Mrs. Sheila talks to you, then you're real."
"Kenny would, nnn, he'd want me to make sure you didn't get in trouble. Kenny was my friend, well sort of. Kenny was my friend as much as anyone was ever my friend."
"Kid's a freak, but endearing," Kenny laughs. "Makes a mean cupcake and is pretty reliable, even with all the twitching and shouting."
"Don't call him a freak," I scold him, like Mom did when she caught him with one of Dad's magazines with girls on the cover. "It's not nice."
"You can call me whatever," Tweek sighs, shutting the oven with his fingers, dropping the doll in the process. "I guess we're like brother and sister now. I've never had one, but I think we're supposed to fight sometimes. That's what they do on TV."
"Kenny is the one who did it," I rush out, cheeks growing red. "I think you're nice. I'll ask Mrs. Sheila to buy the boy kind, if you want to be a kid, too."
No one, including Kenny, says anything.