Chapter Text
The first time Stan Marsh lays his eyes upon Wendy Testaburger, he is in Kindergarten. She steals his gaze immediately. Everything about her drags him in, forces her to stare at her.
She is pretty, and sweet, and she offers him a piece of her cookie at lunch. She makes butterflies flutter in his stomach, nearly to the point of vomiting.
He runs home that day and tells his mama all about the girl from school with the black hair and the shining eyes. He tells her about her purple jacket, and how purple is what red and blue make, and red and blue are the colors of his hat, so she was sent for him.
His mama smiles and ruffles his hair, and listens as he regales her. His mama is the most important person in his world. She is his sun, his moon, his stars, but today, today he thinks maybe someone else can join his solar system.
It becomes apparent early on that there is something in Stan that doesn’t work quite right. There’s something in his brain that flips letters around and compels him to drum his fingers on his desk in a rhythmic pattern while his legs swing beneath the chair.
His teacher tells him to stop, and he does, until he subconsciously begins again. His teacher reprimands him, in front of the class, and tears spring in his eyes. He can feel everyone’s eyes on him, can feel his best friend Kyle and the love of his life Wendy judging him from across the room.
He wipes his tears away and sets his head on his folded arms. He doesn’t tell his mama about this day. He toes off his shoes, keeping his head low, and softly hops up the steps to his room. This is where his mama finds him a few minutes later.
She doesn’t ask what’s wrong, she just drags him into her lap and runs her fingers through his hair as he buries his face in her stomach, his little hands fisted into the back of her shirt.
Wendy Testaburger is smart. She understands math, she excels at reading, and her penmanship is the best in the class. Academics are important to her, or, at least her parents have always told her they are.
She meets Stan Marsh on her first day of Kindergarten. She realizes quickly that he is not smart. He struggles with math, falls behind in reading, and his handwriting is the worst in the class. Despite this, she does not think less of him.
She shares with him, invites her to sit beneath the slide with her at recess. She likes to see him smile, enjoys the way his face lights up when he is happy.
She watches him from a different table while the teacher yells at him and tells him not to make so much noise in class, to sit still like the other children. She can see on his face that he tries, that he always tries, but he can’t help it.
Wendy does not like to see him frown. She does not like to see him cry.
She tells her mother all about the boy at school in the red puffball hat. She tells her mother how kind he is, how gentle he is with the bugs they find in the dirt during science. She does not tell her mother the way Stan struggles in school, because she knows she will be told to find other friends.
Wendy learns quite early on that she has something called ‘OCD’. It stands for something she is too young to remember, but she knows it explains some of her behaviors. It explains why she has to have the TV set to a certain volume, how every night she begs God to spare her family, listing every person she cares about to ensure their protection, despite not really believing in God. She is raised Atheist.
It doesn’t matter what she is diagnosed with, her parents expect no less from her. They preach ‘good grades lead to success’ and tell her that this new development is not an excuse.
Wendy nods her head and flees to her room. She stares at the page of homework on her desk. She doesn’t want to do it, she desperately wants to leave it there for tomorrow, but she can’t. She can’t because God will hate her, and her parents will hate her, and she can’t bear the thought of being hated.
Wendy wonders if Stan is afraid of these things. She thinks he must be, and she pities him even more.
They get older, and things get harder. Stan makes new friends, falls into a group of boys that become infamous around their school.
Wendy also discovers her own group, one of girls. They sit at lunch tables opposite the room from one another now, and it feels so far. Her group points and laughs at his, giggling about boys and their ‘cooties’.
The pair of them lock eyes from such a distance, and there’s a spark between them, even as Wendy is told how boys are ‘gross’, and Stan is told how girls are ‘too dramatic’.
She sleeps over at his house one night and they sit beneath the blanket of his bed, a flashlight clutched between them. They giggle and laugh and poke fun at their friends far later into the night than they should.
Wendy prays that night, and Stan copies her. She doesn’t notice how he leaves his father out of his list, and he doesn’t notice the quiet way she asks for his trouble to ease.
During the fifth grade, Stan and Wendy drift apart. They are placed in separate classes. She is put with Kyle, Stan’s best friend, in the room for above average kids, while the rest of Stan’s group, and some of Wendy’s, are left behind in the regular classes.
They have lunch and recess at different times, and for some reason, this is enough to drive a wedge between them. One that cannot be helped until they move into middle school.
Occasionally they meet up, and they go to one another’s birthday parties, Christmases, and Thanksgivings, but Wendy has become too busy for him. She finds herself with Kyle more often than she does with Stan, since Kyle is able to work with her on their shared homework.
Stan sees them through Kyle’s kitchen window one night, and neither of his friends notice the way his fist pulls away from the glass that he was just about to knock on. He walks home crying, and no one asks him why.