Chapter Text
The morning announcements needed to be in the Guinness Book of Records for angering the entire senior class in 6.5 seconds.
Following the rescheduled blood drive and a reminder of a half-day next week, Gordon Stoltski announced that the school fundraising for the seniors’ class trip had to be cut due to “budgeting reasons,” and the trip itself was unfortunately canceled. The loud rumble of the 17 and 18-year-olds of South Park High could be heard from the lobby, cussing, shouting, and possibly throwing textbooks.
The only way the teachers corralled control back in their classrooms was by threatening after-school detention. It didn’t stop the graduating class from feeling livid, nor did it stop them from talking at lunch. Each lunch block had a pissed off group of seniors, and by the time the third block came with South Park High’s usual suspects, “pissed off” was too soft of a word.
“Fucking bullshit!” Eric slammed his tray down, sending tater tots and pizza bagels jumping. “I’m gonna burn this fucking school down. I mean it this time. I’ll do it tonight, if I have to.”
Kenny rolled his eyes. “Stop with that pyromaniac stuff. No, you won’t.”
“Don’t test me, bro. Imma get me some kerosine at the Dollar Store and a whole lotta matches.”
“How the fuck can they just cut the budget like that?” Stan grumbled, chin in his hands and elbows on the table. “They do a trip for the seniors every year. Saving money shouldn’t be a big surprise to them.”
“It’s not hard to surprise the idiots working here. Nothing we can do about it,” Kyle said, his own chin resting in his hand as he poked his lunch.
Aside from the cafeteria chatter and angry chewing, the table was quiet—until Eric banged his fists, startling the three and nearby tables.
“No no, we are going to do something about this,” he declared, absolutely no room in his voice for jokes. “This school isn’t going to butt-fuck us out of a trip and get away with it. If they want to take away our joy and happiness, then we’ll stick it to ’em good.”
Kyle could already feel his blood pressure rise before he asked, “How?”
“With an RV and Lady Gaga.”
Stan, Kyle, and Kenny just stared, asking two different things with their expressions alone: What the fuck are you on? and Can you please choke? Kenny was the one to reluctantly entertain Eric’s already disturbed brain, asking him to elaborate.
Eric grinned and held up his phone. “Word on the street is she’s going on tour. And yes, while we normally could fly over to Las Vegas or jump to San Francisco to see her, I say we treat ourselves and go to Fenway Park.”
Kenny’s mouth and eyes opened wide. “Fenway Park?!”
Eric nodded. “Fenway Park.”
“Yeah, I heard enough.” Kyle grabbed his tray and moved to stand. Eric damn near shot across the table, gripping his forearm and locking him in his seat. “Stop touching me.”
“Look, you can jerk off and be even more of a wet blanket in a minute. Just hear me out. Stan’s uncle has an RV, so we won’t have to spend money on hotels. We can take food from our houses to last us across state lines, and we all have our permits. We can switch drivers at any time and get to Fenway faster.”
The boys glanced at one another, wondering if Eric was on meds, but…they were also considering the wild idea. Kyle not so much, and he gave Eric a skeptical glare as he snatched his arm free.
“There’s no way our parents are letting us do that shit by ourselves,” Kyle pointed out.
Stan and Kenny’s agreeing groans went around the table, but Eric was quick to brush over them.
“We’re not going to tell our parents, obviously. Are you still five, Kyle?”
“Dude, we can’t not tell our parents we’re doing something like that.”
Eric blinked. “Yes, we can.”
“It’d take us days to reach Fenway Park and drive back, dipshit! We’d never make it back for graduation on time.”
Eric blinked again. “We’ll just drive really fast and piss in bottles.”
Kyle gave him such a deadpan stare, it hurt his face. “Are you fucking stupid?”
“Your mom’s fucking stupid.”
Kyle kicked Eric’s knee hard under the table, earning a few turned heads from his howling foul mouth. Kyle rolled his eyes at the theatrics and jutted a thumb at his side.
“I’m not the only one with a working brain cell right now, am I? We can all agree that Cartman’s dumping out dumber crap than usual, right?”
Eric grimaced from the assault on his limb and pointed right back. “Kyle’s PMSing harder than usual, right? Seriously you guys, it’s a cool idea and we deserve it.”
Stan and Kenny shared an exasperated look for a minute too long, silently asking the other if it was worth it to jump in. All it took was one “Kyle’s got a point, dude” from Stan, and a muttered “Yeah” from Kenny to get a fake smile slapped across Eric’s face. He scoffed out a disbelieving laugh, eyebrows furrowed in amusement. When no one else laughed back, he banged the lunch table again.
“You guys are seriously about to let them win? These fuckers took our senior trip and didn’t even give us another option! They just said, ‘Uph, our bad, fuck you and your school.’ Are you saying we don’t deserve a reward for busting our asses for four years?”
The lack of response triggered the senior in a nanosecond.
“God, you guys are softer than baby poop! Fine. Yeah, no, fine! I hope you all have money for some good lube, ’cause you’re all a bunch of dry ass pussies!”
Eric snatched up his tray and stomped to another table. The three watched him leave and slowly returned to their lunches, chewing in a greatly appreciated quiet. For about a minute.
Stan sucked his teeth, chin returning to his palm. “Damn it. Now I can’t stop thinking about Fenway Park.”
Kenny nodded. “Same.”
“Okay, look, I gotta admit the idea sounds awesome and I’d be down if we could do it, but…” Kyle shook his head with a hard sigh. “With the kind of parents we have, they’re just going to make it harder for us. Hell, even with a super planned trip to Denver, they’d get on our asses.”
Another low hum of agreement circled the table. Life was totally busting their balls with no mercy. Graduation couldn’t come soon enough, but that extra buffer between freedom and one last time with their class was shafted. Maybe there’d be some graduation parties or a tacky Field Day as a replacement, but those would still be in South Park.
Not five days at Six Flags Fiesta Texas and four nights inside a DoubleTree, like the school had promised.
A new wave of anger boiled in Stan’s gut, and he hunched forward on his arms, tapping his fingers fast on his sleeves.
“Then our main issue is the whole permission thing,” he thought out loud, slowly lifting his head. “Okay, so what if you guys told your parents that you’re spending the break with me at my dad’s? He goes to bed late and the farm is huge, so he wouldn’t miss us if we snuck out.”
“What about the RV? Your dad won’t think it’s weird that you have it?” Kenny asked.
“Nah, I’ll just tell him that he asked my uncle if he could borrow it. He gets drunk enough as it is, so he’ll think he did. Then we could just take it on the road when he’s asleep and go from there.”
Kyle let out a half-amused breath, muttering around his food, “Uh huh, yeah, because it’s that easy.”
Stan nudged his foot under the table and turned back to Kenny.
“We could meet at my house after school on Tuesday. My dad’ll drive us to his house, we’ll tell him we’re just gonna do our own thing for five days, and then we’ll leave when he’s asleep.”
Kenny shrugged. “If you’re so sure. Are we all in, though?”
Stan and Kenny’s eyes locked onto Kyle in creepy synchrony that made him jump. He opened his mouth, trying to find another way to make the two see reason, but even he got tired of hearing the same straight and narrow lines from his mouth. He was pissed that there wouldn’t be a school trip for his class just as much as the guys, and he knew his parents would kill him for an unsupervised out-of-state drive.
But missing out on one last taste of freedom before he and his friends (and Eric) went to college would kill him even worse.
“Oh, god damn it…” Kyle heaved in a large breath and crossed his arms. “Fine, whatever. We can talk about this later, but let’s wait ’til after school before telling Cartman what you came up with, Stan.”
Stan raised an eyebrow. “Why?”
“Just to piss him off some more. You know he’ll try and convince us again after lunch, and he’ll stop at nothing if we keep saying no.”
Stan and Kenny whole-heartedly agreed, and all three returned to their lunch.