Chapter Text
Content Warnings: Discussion of a dead animal, discussion of food insecurity, mention of past sexual trauma and/or sexual abuse of a minor, allusions to literally everybody’s trauma (including s5e14, s15e1, s27e2, etc.)
‘At least the rat is dead.’
This was Josh’ internal reasoning as he dumped the body into the rented dumpster, its dark blue rusting over into an awful brown. He gagged as it landed with a squelch, flinching away as though it would come back to life and attack him for his act of outright disrespect. Then, just for good measure, he immediately threw the pair of offensively yellow gloves in after the rat, unable to get the image of its blackened, open guts out of his mind.
“You should be thankful that you never finished med school,” his partner, Aditya, commented unhelpfully from the doorway. Even though it was barely six p.m., the summer sun was already beginning to sink beneath the horizon, and his silver dolphin bite piercings glinted the same soft, downy shade of pink as the sky.
“Dude, you should be thankful I dropped out. Could you imagine having me in the emergency room?” Josh murmured, throwing the door closed behind them before either of their howling, mangy beasts (see: cats) could rush out into the snowy wilderness.
Addie scoffed and returned to the kitchen, where he was switching out the light bulbs in their track lighting for a warmer, friendlier tone. “Yeah, I can imagine it you clumsy fuck. I mean seriously, who gets concussed playing Scrabble?”
With an eye roll, Josh knelt next to the fireplace, more cautious this time after having discovered the rat carcass. “Ask your aunt. I swear that toy car wasn’t there like, a microsecond before.” He hesitated briefly before whirling around, eyes now narrowed. “Also it doesn’t fucking count if we weren’t playing yet. If I hadn’t been the one to get up and grab the game, it could have been anyone who got hurt.”
“But my dear, it was you,” Addie teased, eyes as sharp and dark as metal glinting in the sparse sunlight that made its way through the living room windows.
As his boyfriend turned down the hall to turn the electricity back on, Josh sighed and spun to face the window. It wasn’t every week that you moved into a fugly turquoise bungalow in the middle of Colorado, and he wanted to savor these moments. If that ‘gay little song' was any indication, he was going to like this town.
Miami sucked; that much Josh knew from the beginning. As a kid growing up in rural, Northern, buttfuck Florida, he had always wanted to live in a city, and had made that dream come true right out of college. At first it was like some big, exciting adventure when he and Aditya got their teeny apartment, but the longer he stayed in a place that was loud and reeking of pot, the more bitter he became.
So he listened to his mother for the first time in twelve years and began looking for houses and school districts further afield. Late nights where he should have been cuddling or eating awful margarita pizzas with his partner were traded in for staring over Addie’s shoulder at a cracked tablet, filled to the brim with grainy photos of houses he didn’t want to live in. They gave him headaches – both the screen, and the poor choices displayed before him.
One of his biggest priorities was that he wouldn’t give up being an elementary school teacher for anything. Some teachers would find their jobs a living hell, but in the past three years that he’d been teaching fifth grade in Miami, Josh had truly dedicated himself to making sure these kids got all of the education and support they deserved. Putting smiles on kids' faces and keeping bullshit out of their lives was one of the few things that mattered to Josh besides his quaint and queer little family.
That in and of itself wasn’t a problem, of course — the real problem was that every time a school district looking for a teacher to fill a position in fifth grade piqued his interest, either with location or pay, the houses in the area slid another zero or two onto the end of their house prices. His springtime was filled with cringing and pushing the tablet away right before bedtime, a situation that inevitably left his mind too full of numbers and financial decisions to sleep right. Houses in Massachusetts, Minnesota, and New Mexico with schools that looked like a dream to work in were scratched off of his list one by one, an action always followed by a pained smile and a despondent ‘we’ll try again next time’.
And so they did try again, day after boiling hot day, until Josh finally began searching the northwest. Oregon and Washington, as Coraline-core as they were, evaded the young couple’s price range, and Josh found his search being dragged slightly south, to one of the only ‘blue’-ish states in the funky little middle.
Every school district he checked included at the district and town’s website of course, of which South Park’s was…interesting. Nice enough, but nothing to brag about in comparison to some of the other towns that Josh had been eyeing. But the preliminary Google search for this town’s school? That brought up a little gem that Josh couldn’t help but fall in love with.
Dramatic sound effects to open the video, clearly made on a shoestring budget by one kid by the name of ‘Stan Marsh’, all leading into a scene just as poorly acted as he hoped. A little boy in an ill-fitting varsity jacket that he had presumably stolen from a sibling stood in front of an obnoxiously bright building, fidgeting and staring directly at the cameraman.
“You wanna know who I hate? I hate that kid Butters! He’s a dork!” He shouted, to which the boy in a loose yellow sweater next to him nodded, his crutches slightly sliding on the icy ground.
“Yeah, let’s go p-pick on him! Yeah!” The other boy responded, with a timid and sweet demeanour that didn’t at all match the menacing energy he was clearly supposed to be giving off. Josh covered his mouth to stop his laughter, but it was hard as the video only got cheesier and somehow, more adorable.
Well-made? For the kids’ ages, yeah. Well-intentioned? Very much so. Perfect? Never, but it didn’t need to be, because somehow, Josh was sold on this silly little town. Plus, the song was pretty catchy.
Apparently, it was a town that many were sold on, because the housing prices were in the dirt. So he and Addie beat those financial odds and had a place to settle into within their late twenties, albeit not the nicest one ever. There was a lot of work that needed to be done before it was truly able to be called home, but it was a place to hang their coats and lay their heads, and that was enough for now. Josh would work at the elementary school during the daytime, and Aditya would be working the nighttime nursing shifts at Hell’s Pass; they would have their perfect little afternoons in between, and that was all they needed.
Addie snuck up behind Josh at the window and slipped a hand under his crossed arms, massaging his chest delicately and pressing a chaste kiss against his neck. “You lost in thought again?”
“I was… but you found me,” Josh said, his voice just above a whisper.
“Blegh, so cheesy,” Addie giggled before blowing a raspberry into the back of Josh’ head. As his partner swatted him off, Addie flicked the lights on, looking at the fire-like light that had been cast around their living room and kitchen area. “Whaddaya think?”
“I think we made the right decision by coming here,” he confessed as he pattered back to Addie’s side and nuzzled into his shoulder.
It would be the right decision, sure, but never the easy one. Miami was awful, of course; the kids never listened, the city made his anxiety blow up like a balloon, and the world moved too quickly. But even Miami would have been easier than this town, where time was warped, and no one seemed to be living in any set period of it.
…he would make the decision a million times over.
Painted in a fresh coat of yellow that reminded Josh of the gloves he’d used to dispose of the rat on moving day, South Park Elementary School felt very out of place amidst the surrounding town.
The building was much bigger than Josh realized, looking far too large to house such a small student body; he reasoned that it might have been built that way in hopes that its population would grow, developing into something much more sustainable as time went by. Freshly-planted bushes and flower beds sat beneath the front windows, and colorful chalk artwork swept across the sidewalks, making the school look much more welcoming than its pictures on the website did.
Everything about the display felt eerily sugar-coated to him. Someone was very clearly trying to make it look more pleasing to the eye, especially for prospective families seeking a good school district for their kids to learn in, and prospective faculty seeking work like himself. Admittedly, there wasn’t much information to go on about the school at all, not even on its own website, and seeing how hastily spruced up it was now invoked the idea that they might have been trying to win back good publicity in some way.
As he shifted his car into ‘park’, Josh swallowed down his nervousness; he’d already gotten the job, after all, since the Zoom meeting with the principal was apparently ‘more than enough’. This wasn’t some huge interview, just a faculty meeting recommended by the school counselor to ‘cover the basics’, whatever that meant.
‘Maybe that’s why I’m so jittery,’ Josh speculated internally, rapping his knuckles against the wheel as he glanced at the clock, begging for a few more minutes to suddenly appear. ‘This isn’t really…standard.’
But the clock really wasn’t on his side today, was it?
Like a little kid who didn’t want to go to class, Josh dragged his feet as he got his messenger bag out of the passenger’s side door, making his way up to the sunshine-y building over chalk drawings of butterflies and apple trees. To the direct right of the school, by what looked like a loading bay, little plumes of what looked like cigarette smoke rose into the air, and Josh would have had half the mind to check it out if he wasn’t so anal about being late.
Stepping into the towering lobby with echoing footsteps, he tried to make sense of the unfamiliar layout, using the helpful signs on the wall to guide him in the right direction. Almost every surface was done up in some shade of green, and the color was complemented with the South Park Cows logo splashed across them wherever he turned. Hallway decorations were already adorning the walls outside a few classrooms, and he made a mental note to buy some of his own as he finally made his way to the main office. Once he’d found it, Josh knocked on the door labelled ‘COUNSELOR’, running his tongue over his teeth and feeling for any bits of food he had somehow missed.
“Oh, um, m’kay, come on in!”
Josh opened the door on a pair of individuals, who smiled politely and nodded upon his entry; one, a woman in a swivel chair that had clearly been pulled in from somewhere else, who carried a stack of manila folders about a mile high, and the other, a man behind the room’s sole desk wearing a neon green shirt. While he would never comment upon such a thing out loud, Josh couldn’t help but be startled by the enormous size of the man’s head, and wondered silently if he had used a Zoom filter to make it appear smaller in their previous encounters on video.
“Hello there. Mr. Mackey and Vice Principal Woman, correct?” Josh asked, searching for a chair to sit in. The only one available to him was one clearly meant for a small child, which he dragged over without complaint.
“Yep, it’s, um, wonderful to meet you in person, Mr. Mendoza. How have you liked your time in South Park so far?” Mr. Mackey questioned.
It took Josh a moment to answer, as he was currently preoccupied by stealthily readjusting the way he was sitting — his pants, which had been so nicely ironed that morning, were quite the restriction on his movement, and he didn’t want to make that fact too apparent. In all fairness, he had not been expecting to be sitting in a chair that forced his knees onto the same level as his chin.
“It’s been great so far. Uhhh…my partner starts work at Hell’s Pass Hospital tonight as a night nurse in their emergency room, and I’m really excited for the school year. Only ten days left! I’ve already started buying highlighters and gluesticks and all of that stuff, and I’m looking forward to a great year with these kiddos.” He smiled, pleased with his answer, and hoped that he had imagined the worried glance between Mackey and Woman.
“M’kay… well, we felt it appropriate to inform you of some previous concerns we have had regarding the classroom that you’re inheriting. Mostly because of the fact that state and local law enforcement has told us that we must.”
…
What had he just said?
Blinking stupidly for a moment, Josh cleared his throat and nodded. “Um… right. What does that mean?”
“This class has had some particular trouble, especially over the last year or two,” Ms. Woman helped, bearing a cautiously optimistic smile on her face. “We know that you have a Masters in General Special Education from Virginia Commonwealth, yes? And you’re BCBA certified?”
“Uh, yeah, and I’m making sure that my license transfers from Florida. I’m sorry, may we return to the…law enforcement thing?” Josh inquired. For a moment he was worried he would sound like a whiner, but then just as soon reminded himself that no, meetings like these were not normal, and he had every right to ask such a question.
“Of course,” she reassured, and yet, Josh couldn’t help but see a quiver of doubt in the way Ms. Woman held herself, like she was dealing with an animal that would bolt at any given moment.
With a deep breath, she began again. “I’m not going to sugarcoat any of this, Mr. Mendoza, but this collection of students has been unfairly branded as a problem since day one. In my personal opinion, they are strong and wonderful kids, and I want nothing more than the best for them, but somehow, they have been singled out by the universe to have every disaster happen to them. As such, they are something of pariahs in the eyes of the school board and superintendent.”
Josh simply stared for a moment, before finding his voice quickly. “That… that can’t actually be legal, right?”
Ms. Woman shook her head. “You’re absolutely right, Mr. Mendoza. It shouldn’t be, but the rules in this district are a little too loose about it, and they refuse to change them.”
“Most of ‘em have been grouped into the same class since first grade,” Mr. Mackey interjected, “And their numbers have risen every time there’s another incident with a student outside of the class. I hate to say it, but they’re pretty much viewed as the ‘problem class’ in school, a reject bin for students who don’t fit the mold. And for the longest time, there were very few teachers who were simultaneously qualified and willing to handle them, so we’re extremely relieved that you matched all of our qualifications.”
“Noted,” Josh said on autopilot, unable to wrap his head around what he had just heard. He’d worked with some shitty school boards in his time both teaching and studying how to become a teacher, but this… this kind of behavior was so incredibly unacceptable that he didn’t even know what to say. In what world did adults think it was okay to shirk off students into a single classroom just because they didn’t like them?!
“For the most part, it’s a great group of children, and I would be extremely proud to call myself their teacher, had I been in your position. They’re bright as heck, and some of the most grounded kids I’ve ever met have been in that classroom,” Ms. Woman complimented, a genuine smile upon her face. “If it were up to me, they wouldn’t have any such label. My co-workers and I have persistently advocated for them to the school board, but they just won’t listen to any of us.”
“It’s true. One of the kids is president of Student Council, another is the quarterback on the school’s football team, and several have received nothing but straight A’s during their time at school.” Mr. Mackey added. “And yet, there are issues that they just can’t see around, and while there’s… well, one that is within reason, the rest are simply by association with him, and he drags everyone else down as a result.”
“Has anyone else tried to argue against this?!” Josh asked in disbelief. “What about their parents?!”
“Several parents have been trying to call them out for years, some more vocally than others,” Ms. Woman explained. “There’s been accusations of bigotry from the board as well, and credible ones at that. This is the class with the highest concentration of LGBTQ+ questioning students, neurodivergent students, and students with disabilities, and it’s most likely not a coincidence that they ended up together. On top of all that, it’s a class that has been without a proper teacher for far too long, so they are severely behind compared to other classes, no matter how bright they all are.”
Well… if he didn’t already think that the board’s reasoning was the biggest load of bullshit he had ever heard, this just confirmed it.
Shifting uncomfortably in his chair, Josh watched as Mr. Mackey lowered his gaze to his desktop. “Other than that, the biggest problem that most of them have is the, m’kay, troubling state of their mental health. The majority of these students require extensive counseling during the school day, some for depression, some for complex PTSD, some for anxiety disorders. We’ve stopped counting how many mental health days these kids have taken last spring, and I won’t call any of them out for taking as many as they can, because they deserve to after what they’ve gone through.”
Josh had no idea why, but the utmost fury that had been rising in his chest was suddenly overtaken by a persistent uneasiness. He had always associated children with the typical happy smiles and skinned knees, sticker books and wiffle balls, pigtails and dinosaur chicken nuggets. His previous students in Florida had their problems, of course, but nothing like what Mackey was describing to him. What had done this? Who had… who had hurt these kids so badly that diagnoses like these were warranted?
“Is… are there any specifics to know going in?” Josh asked hesitantly, unsure if he wanted the answer. “About the kids, I mean. Are there any triggers that they may have, or incidents that I should keep in mind?”
Wordlessly, Ms. Woman passed the envelope to Mr. Mackey with a solemn expression. Pulling out a thick stack of multicolored folders, Mr. Mackey straightened up and cleared his throat. “Like I said, Mr. Mendoza, we’ll begin with covering the bases…”
“...she said that a ‘little birdie’ had inspired her to talk to somebody about what happened when she was six years old, and she came to me right at the end of last school year. She’s been in both private counseling and group therapy since then with out-of-school professionals, but still is scheduled to come in for weekly check-ins, m’kay…”
“...they confessed everything on live TV, right in front of him, and my God, he was horrified…I mean, if I found out at eight years old that my mother tried to drown me in a murder-suicide, I guess I would lash out too…”
“...just opening that door, and seeing him in that little game room…I just know they did something to him, and I wish with all my heart that I’d gotten there to save him sooner…”
Passive as he looked, Josh was internally struggling with how to process all of this new information, and the growing sense of horror as he learned more about the mistreatment and misfortune of some of his future students. Mr. Mackey had mentioned instances of severe bullying, kidnapping, sexual trauma, and issues outside of school that extended into witnessing the death of a family member or friend. It was all extremely distressing to hear, and apparently this hadn’t even scratched the surface.
“...Apple still insists that everything they did was legal, but his family is fighting and has been fighting against that claim in court for some time. I heard that he hasn’t slept right ever since, and Lord knows the bullying only made it worse…”
“...something really changed in her during that period, and her reputation’s never really recovered from it…I can’t count how many people have chased her away from their lunch table, calling her the ‘second coming of the fatass’…”
“...it took so long for his muscles to recover from that ordeal, and for him to be able to breathe on his own…it was misdiagnosed as Muscular Dystrophy at first, mostly because Polymyositis at this age is almost unheard of, especially in boys, and he’ll be struggling with those symptoms for the rest of his life. He needs extra help with both schoolwork and homework because of how much class he misses for his condition…I swear, it’s like he’s not even in school half of the time…”
Each new detail, each new woe, wove a tapestry like nothing Josh had ever heard before. There were students living in poverty, reports of abuse from several households that ultimately went nowhere, and medical horror stories so graphic that they’d even make Addie sick. To make matters worse, each case document had school photos from the previous year to go with them, which meant he now had a series of little faces to match up with these nightmarish tales.
All of these kids, forever changed by hardships that they never should have been exposed to.
…Josh didn’t think it could get worse. That is, until Mr. Mackey sighed and readjusted his glasses, looking over a packet that looked quite a bit like legal paperwork.
“M’kay, so this is, um, this is really why we needed to talk to you today. One of the students in this class, who we haven’t really talked about in depth yet, um, was the cause of some of the incidents we described previously. Many of the incidents, actually.” He slid a stack of papers across the table, which Josh accepted, watching it defeatedly flop onto his lap. He opened up the cover of the folder and stared at a photo of a child with a charming smile upon his face, eyes closed and chin resting pleasantly upon his palm.
“This…is Eric Cartman. In all my years, I’ve never seen such a level of sociopathy in someone, and I doubt that I’ll ever see a case as severe as this one again. I feel awful describing a child as such, but Josh, you need to know going in that Eric Cartman is a purely evil individual and cannot be trusted.”
The more Mr. Mackey spoke, the more the anxiety in Josh’ chest tightened into what could only be described as a physical pain, like rubbing an ice cube on your skin. “Okay, so, Eric is…evil. What all has he done?”
“Let’s start with some big ones, m’kay. Strong?” With a sigh, Strong Woman flicked open a note pad and proceeded to verbalize a laundry list of offenses so horrid Josh looked around for hidden cameras as she spoke to make sure he wasn’t on a prank show.
“How about we begin with the Tenorman family? It started last year, when their young man Scott sold little Eric his, um, his pubic hair…”
“...even after Mel Gibson showed up to town and displayed how much of, um, a unique individual he was, Eric insisted that he was trying to do the right thing by ‘exterminating the Jews’...”
“…in the end, he refused to confess that he had dressed up the cow all along, all because he didn’t want to disclose his actual penis size, which is ironic because he had already done that several months before…”
“…now the jury found him innocent after the first two plane crashes, but the third one was that one that they tenuously decided was a ‘crime of passion’. Passion for what, the jury did not clarify…”
“...and, well, Butters was locked down in the bunker for about four days, and Eric came back eventually, but by that point, he was committed to the lie and to going to Casa Bonita. So he came up with an even more elaborate story…”
“...m’kay, Magic Johnson ended up being the answer, but it didn’t take away the fact that Eric had still intentionally given his classmate the HIV virus, and he ended up suspended for several weeks afterwards…”
“...and that’s all that we know at the moment, but there could be more that we just haven’t uncovered yet.”
Josh didn’t speak for a long time. He found it impossible to find a proper response to anything Mackey and Strong Woman had described. Once more, he looked over his shoulder to see if there were any hidden cameras. “And this is…one fourth grader that did all of this?”
“Mmm, some of it was in third grade,” Mackey answered, seemingly unaware of how distressed Josh was becoming. “But yeah, most of his, um, incidents, were during the last academic year, when he started lashing out a bit more violently.”
“For obvious reasons, he’s on extremely thin ice with this school,” Strong Woman reassured. “Things came to a boiling point at the end of last year; in May, he caused a public disturbance at the end-of-year art show, and gave the administration reason to believe that he was a direct threat to another student’s wellbeing. We, um…we ended up having to suspend him for the rest of the school year, and protective measures are being taken going into this one.”
‘Jesus Christ.’
“For many of his classmates, they had also reached their limits with his behavior,” she continued. “Once he’s back in school next week, we’re introducing a series of new rules and regulations to keep him in line – mainly, they’ll consist of him having to stay away from the students who have made complaints about him. For example, Clyde, Butters, Kyle, and Heidi have all said that they’re uncomfortable being too close to him, and he is not allowed to be seated near them in the classroom under any circumstances.”
“But because of the school board’s aforementioned rules, we obviously cannot switch him into a different class from them. So there’s going to need to be an eye on Eric at all times to make sure that none of the harassment we have previously described is taking place, m’kay? Uh, also, within a few days of the term starting we will get you a teacher’s assistant, so you will one hundred percent have an extra set of hands!” Mr. Mackey informed Josh hurriedly, probably noticing the cracks forming in his calm facade.
This was too much. This was way too much. Some days Josh woke up and felt like he was barely equipped to handle a non-traumatized and non-lethal group of kids. Having it dumped on him that this may become his everyday? It was enough for his resolve to break. But he at least had an intact backbone; he could maybe get out of this somehow.
“And what about their teacher from last year? What was their biggest problem with the class?”
“Well, the primary problem with Mr. Garrison is that he’s unprofessional and potentially unqualified. A majority of his class, when interviewed, said that he spends more time talking about his personal life and enjoyment of The Love Boat more than he does the actual curriculum. When asked, all of the students could tell the anonymous interviewer all about Mr. Garrison’s difficulties in his on-and-off again boyfriend, but most couldn’t name a single literary character in the assigned curriculum books, explain how to measure the degree of an angle, or name a U.S. capital city outside of Denver,” Mr. Mackey explained, scratching the back of his neck. Josh swallowed that information about as easily as one would swallow a baseball.
“Additionally, he’s had some…issues, in the past, with behaving appropriately around students. He in fact is known to have such a fluctuating personality that many of the students deeply fear him. To quote little Craig Tucker, he and most of his classmates are ‘constantly waiting on his next phase so we can get it over with’,” Strong Woman read from a sheet of paper, and Josh’ hypothetical baseball swelled into a basketball.
Strong Woman swallowed nervously, a tight smile on her face. “Now Mr. Mendoza, we would completely understand if this is too much to handle, and if you would like to resign now, we would not judge you for a single second.”
“She’s right. It won’t be easy, m’kay.”
And he thought about it. He thought about the kids, and everything he had learned about them. He thought about the fear in Mackey’s eyes when Eric Cartman entered the conversation. He thought about how there was nothing that he wanted to do more than run for the hills until he got back to the motherfucking swampass city he had tried so hard to leave.
But instead, he thanked Mr. Mackey and Ms. Woman, gathered his things, and said he would get in contact with them later.
“We don’t have any hashbrowns. Or ketchup. Or avocados.”
That was what pulled Josh away from mentally drafting his letter of resignation. He had been sitting alone in the living room, vision narrowing in on his new South Park Elementary School ID tag, which he had received two days before at the meeting, clutched so hard in his hand that it was beginning to slice into his palms. He couldn't do this. These kids were damaged to a level he couldn’t help them back from, and to try would be insanity.
But he’d dragged Addie all the way out here, away from their stability and support networks. He promised him that it would work, that they would love it in the little mountain town. How was he supposed to do all of that while facing the hardest challenge he’d ever come across?
Addie’s interjection pulled him out of it. He stood in the doorway to the kitchen, waking up while the sun was at its peak after working his usual night shift, wearing nothing but a Korn shirt that must have been eight sizes too large. Bored, drowsy, a little bit annoyed, and both the person Josh wanted to see the most and the least.
“Um, okay. Good morning. I’ll…I’ve been meaning to go shopping again anyways, we’re still kind of missing some bare essentials,” Josh said as he dragged himself out of their plushiest armchair, nearly identical to the thinking chair from Blue’s Clues.
“Your day went good?” Addie inquired, spinning an impossibly loud metal straw in a mason jar of black iced coffee.
In the last few hours, Josh had forgotten to take his anxiety meds, thought about committing a crime, and had crashed out and cried in the bathroom twice.
“Yeah, it was great!” Josh chirped, getting up on his tiptoes and planting a kiss on Addie’s cheek. “I’ll be back in a jiffy with your requests. Anything else you want?”
Biting his lip in a questioningly discreet manner, Addie tried for a smile. “Crunchy peanut butter, if you can find any.”
“You’re a horrid, dirty, heathen bastard,” Josh sang on his way out the door. He reached for his car keys, but reconsidered when he thought of all of the mental health professionals saying that ‘walks are good for your anxiety’. Maybe it would soothe his own somehow?
The lock clicked behind him satisfyingly, and Josh stepped out onto…a barely shoveled sidewalk, which in turn led into a road that was already dusted by snow. In August. What the hell kind of decision making process led him here again?
The nagging voice at the back of Josh’ mind told him that it was all the more reason to throw in the towel, but he pressed onwards as though it were normal to go through a world of seemingly eternal winter, watching absently for dog crap that may have been fossilized to the sidewalk in the freezing temperature. Everything on top of each other led to a conclusion that is impossible to ignore; this town was nowhere near as kickass as it had been advertised to be.
“Avast ye scoundrel, fall back before I slit your throats upon the golden sand!”
Josh glanced to the left and watched a boy, no more than nine or ten years old, jump off of a stepladder that had clearly been dragged from a nearby garage. He flung sand out of the front yard’s sandbox, spreading it all over the snowy, muddy grass and creating a slush that Josh was certain his parents would be absolutely appalled by. He wore a striped red and white shirt and an eyepatch, the latter of which was clearly originally for medicinal purposes and was being worn on the wrong eye. There was another boy that he was swordfighting with who wore a vest and a Lynyrd Skynyrd bandana tied around his head like a pirate, a pair of plastic cutlasses in their hands as they sparred.
“I have but no choithe, my fiend, for you thtill hold the mithion logbook of Captain Neckbeard! Altho, why would I retreat, this is my fucking houthe?!” The little lispy brunette shouted back at him as Josh passed by, one eye on the children.
“Now go, New Kid, thow the deckhand what you’ve learned!” The brunette pirate cried, and a third kid ran out of the bushes and jumped atop their shared foe from the stepstool, eyes wide and somewhat deranged.
Now, while he couldn’t exactly recall what he spent his summers doing with his neighborhood friends, to Josh this felt a little…elaborate, to say the least. The other little boy that they were fighting had been knocked over into a sprawl. He squeaked in defiance, snarling at the attacker.
“H-hey now, that’s not fair, Scott! Why, why, Douchebag oughta take turns like everybody else, it’s just dirty rotten cheatin’ if she doesn’t!” The tiny blonde boy warbled, his voice carrying an oddly Southern twang that his lispy companion didn’t possess. The third kid continued to say nothing from atop the blonde’s shoulders, pulling a wooden dagger out from their belt, clearly stolen from a karate school of sorts.
“Butterth, it’th not fair when you take Cartman’th book, he’th like, actually mad at uth now,” the boy apparently named Scott shot back quickly, looking over his shoulder nervously as if the person he was speaking of would pop up any moment.
“Well I don’t really give much of a darn, cuz, um, cuz Principal said he’s not supposed to be ‘h-harassin’ us anymore now,” the blonde replied with a stomp. As Josh walked by, they disappeared into background noise, but he noted the names. Scott, Cartman, Butters…while he had thought them too small at first, he came to the realization that those were his students, or at least his future ones…if he chose not to flee back to Florida.
He turned around the corner, lips tight in guilt. It wasn’t fair to those poor kids, having a teacher bailing on them, but with everything Mackey and Woman had told him, it seemed like he was taking on an impossible task. He usually wasn’t one to back away from a challenge, especially in the classroom, and he knew he was about to let so many people down – Addie, the kids, their parents, the faculty, and himself. Hell, he wouldn’t even be surprised if his cats would be disappointed in him. But he’d been there before; like med school.
Josh had wanted desperately to be a nurse, like almost all of his cousins before him, who weren’t forced to grow up in stupid, podunk towns in Florida, but it never stuck no matter what he tried. He was grossed out by everything, barely even able to handle the textbook illustrations, and couldn’t keep up with the demanding workload. He switched to psychology, took a hands-on child development course in his undergraduate freshman spring, and it stuck like glue. Maybe South Park would be just another ‘med school’ too.
Further down the sidewalk, Josh gasped out an expletive under his breath as he watched a little girl, about the same age as the boys he’d left behind, running across the street barefoot without checking for any cars. She wore a shoddily made coconut bra over a unicorn t-shirt and a skirt made from plastic, shiny grass over pink jeggings. Cackling, she glanced over one shoulder, plastic gold coins in her arms, and Josh watched as two more kids — another girl and a boy in an electric wheelchair — wearing pirate outfits themselves chased her down, matching scowls upon their faces. The boy in the wheelchair had built a cardboard pirate ship that surrounded his chair, which was barely held up by a normal leather belt. The islander girl dropped a couple of rhinestones in the street, and her pirate frenemy bent down to snatch them, paying no mind to the fact that there was a Honda rounding the corner.
“Oh, oh, oh, honey, please watch out!” Josh called out, and the little girl glanced up briefly before scuttling back to the sidewalk that Josh was on. She didn’t thank him, but continued sneering at the coconut-girl, dropping the little fake diamonds into a Sadie Dakota patterned pouch she had tied around her waist with a frayed shoelace.
…what the hell kind of neighborhood wide game was this? The fact that in 202X, parents were still letting their children run around unattended gave Josh a slight shock, but he couldn’t say it wasn’t effective. His mother let him do that all the time…he just also was ten times more likely to eat dirt or some shit because of the lack of supervision.
During the rest of his walk to the Food 4 Little, Josh paid attention to the town in a way he hadn’t the previous days while driving. Not only did he see at least eight more little buccaneers running through the streets or sword-fighting with each other, but he noticed many other weird details that hadn’t stuck out to him before.
First, an old man wearing overalls appeared seemingly out of nowhere and recommended that he take a different path to get to the store, warning him that the road ahead was cursed. Josh felt disembodied eyes on him for the rest of the walk down that particular street, prompting him to walk even faster.
Next, as he made his way up Main Street, he swore he saw something long and grey glide out of a shop behind him, humanoid enough that some didn’t give it a second glance, but Josh felt a shiver run down his spine at its presence. There was something just inherently…wrong about it, and the fact that no one around him seemed to question it only intensified the feeling.
Just outside of the grocery store itself, a rumpled blue towel was dragged along the sidewalk by the breeze, the strong smell of weed wafting through the air as well. While Josh initially assumed that it was probably leftover from some kids that had already fled the scene, he could have sworn that he heard a little voice asking if he wanted to get high from the filthy, blue towel.
Clearly, skipping his meds today was a bad idea. Josh suddenly felt like he was losing his mind.
He slung a green wicker basket from the store onto his elbow, and sighed contemplatively as he made his way to the produce section. Realistically, if he told them now, a week before, they probably would be able to find some replacement for him. Worst case scenario, that teacher Mr. Garrison could follow them into the fifth grade. He couldn’t have been that bad, right? There would be other school districts in Colorado that would take him, and maybe they could stay in town. But he would probably run into people like Mackey, and God, wouldn’t that be awkward, and-
A little girl stood between the apples and watermelons, clutching a scarlet fish plushie with a wide open mouth. Somebody had clearly put a handful of nickels in the mouth of the fish, which she clutched like a precious treasure. Tear tracks ran down her cheeks, and she took deep, heaving breaths that sent her messy, crusty pigtails bouncing.
Godammit. Josh took a deep breath himself, stepped out of his anxious newcomer persona, and into Mr. Mendoza. The one who felt an obligation to protect every kid in his sightline, whether that be in the classroom, or out in a big, scary world that even he feared sometimes. It was his job, what he did best, so why not step into the role when someone obviously needed him to?
“Hey bud, you okay?” He inquired, getting down on her level as he did so. She was probably only seven years old, and took a step backwards nervously. “Did you lose your Mommy or Daddy?”
“I-I-I’m not s’posed to talk to strangers!” She shouted, stomping one foot delicately and wiping tears away with her knuckles.
“Alright, alright, good point. Is there anybody I can find for you? If you stay here with a person who works at the store I can go find your parents,” Josh suggested, beckoning over a bored-looking teenage employee who seemed to have just noticed the scenario at hand.
The little girl hesitantly looked up at the teenager, who gave her a warm smile and introduced herself the same way Josh just had, crouched down and with sincerity. “M-my big brother Kenny went somewhere. He wanted to look for Nilla Wafers, but I couldn’t find him in that aisle, and-and-and, now he’s gone!” She bawled into her stuffed fish, and Josh nodded reassuringly.
“Okay, I bet he’s nearby somewhere. I doubt he’d leave you anywhere on purpose, trust me on that. What’s Kenny wearing today?”
The little girl mumbled something about an ‘orange parka’, and Josh took off, scanning each aisle for a flash of orange. He didn’t know what exactly he was expecting, but in his mind, probably a teenager or a middle schooler, someone who was a bit careless and not very responsible, all things considered. Someone who looked likely to lose a sister.
But instead, he turned down the candy aisle and saw a tiny boy wearing an orange snowsuit, his hood pulled tight and taut around his face like a safety blanket. He scanned the shelves with a silent, longing gaze, ice blue eyes open in something like religious ecstasy as he stared at the rows of chocolate and lollipops.
“H-hey kiddo, what’s up?”
He mumbled something incoherent, but Josh thought that he heard a few swear words mixed in. Josh cleared his throat and smiled softly.
“Um…do you mind repeating that? Maybe…with your hood down?”
He loosened the hood slightly, not letting it down, but allowing Josh to see a freckled face like a cherub’s, chipped teeth behind chapped lips. “I’m looking for something I can buy for 80 cents. Do you know how fuckin’ hard that is?”
“Pretty hard in this economy, I imagine,” Josh muttered, looking over the plastic wrappers carefully and pretending he wasn’t astounded by the little one’s language. “Maybe you can look for a gumball machine or someth- oh! Sorry I got distracted. Um, you’re Kenny, right? Your little sister is in the produce section, and she’s looking for you. She’s a little freaked out, and-”
Apparently, this child was Kenny. Because the second Josh mentioned a little sister, he jumped to attention and looked around frantically, before sliding through Josh’ legs like a baby penguin and sprinting towards the fresh vegetables, muffledly yelling another name as he ran.
“Oh, um, buddy…sure, okay,” Josh sighed and turned around, ready to continue his shopping as normal. He meandered through the aisles, grabbing Addie’s requested items from earlier, and also some little things like cooking wine, chili flakes, and other stuff you never think of on a first go-around of a new store.
But the longer he shopped, the more he began to notice something rather unusual. At first, it was just the faint sound of snowboots squeaking on the linoleum behind him, but the longer his shopping went on, the more Josh saw flashes of orange over his shoulder. He spotted the same fur lined face watching him curiously in the shellfish section, and then again as he grabbed a frozen pizza. He swung his basket onto his other arm as he walked by a beer stand advertising something about the Broncos, and there, nearly blending in with the orange in the football logo, was Kenny, who pressed his back against the cardboard like he was playing super-spy.
‘Come to think of it, why isn’t he playing outside with all those other kids?’ He was, with the exception of the little sister creeping behind him — she now also seemed to be playing spy — the only child in the store without an adult, something that clearly seemed to be of no problem to the people around them.
With each labyrinthine twist of the aisles, Josh became more aware of the figures following him, until eventually, there was a tiny tap on the back of his hand from a scratchy glove, something that eventually turned into a tiny tug on his hand.
Maybe it was just the summer break speaking, but Josh could have sworn that he was…little. All of the kids in this town just seemed so exceptionally little, and Kenny most of all, swallowed and bundled up within his orange parka, his eyes of Alice blue just peeking out from behind tangerine curtains.
“Mister, I never said ‘thank you’ for getting my attention. I got distracted while shopping for us, and I didn’t realize Karen had left,” Kenny confessed, now with one arm wrapped around the little girl, who was now smiling brightly within her brother’s embrace.
“Oh, no need to thank me bud, it was your sister who helped me find you; it was all up to her!” He chirped, lowering himself back onto their level. “Karen, is it? Are you here looking for a treat with your brother today?”
Karen shook her head sweetly, a smile gracing her lips. “No mister, Kenny and I are looking for tonight’s dinner.”
Josh instantly felt mortified for having suggested the gumball machine. He gulped and watched the children’s faces for any sign of dishonesty, but found two pairs of completely earnest eyes staring back up at him. Eighty cents for their entire dinner. That was it. That was all they had. And it wouldn’t buy jack shit.
“Well… uh, how about we look around together? If you see anything that you can’t afford that you want, maybe I can step in and give you guys a hand?” Josh offered, straining to keep a smile on his face for their sake. Silently, he was begging for them to agree, if only so he could make sure they had something to eat tonight. “Let’s at least walk around for a little while.”
Luckily, they seemed to like this idea, and soon the trio found themselves strolling up and down the aisles, the siblings resembling a pair of ducklings following their mother. Josh plucked boxes of pasta and rice off the shelf, unsure as to what his family would have on hand, making sure to grab some easy stovetop and microwaveable meals as well. Kenny and Karen followed and watched obediently as he collected essentials, with Kenny only stepping in when he occasionally thought Josh was going too far.
His breaking point was Josh reaching for a box of Nilla Wafers, for which he shook his head, tugging his hood down with a desperate and aghast expression upon his face. “Sir, that's like fifty dollars worth of groceries, you need to stop!”
“I, um…not really. I don’t need to stop, I just wanna help out a little bit.”
“But we only have eighty cents!” Kenny cried, holding the meager change up for him to see as though he expected Josh to make him pay for all of this.
“I know, Kenny, I told you I would step in. Think of it as a back to school gift or something, okay? You and your parents, or, um, guardians, don’t need to pay me back whatsoever, it’s all good,” Josh promised, sticking the yellow box of vanilla cookies into a now overloaded shopping basket. As they wandered through the store, the only thing he could think of was shopping for his own household as a child. When you had a single mother that worked three jobs, if you were by yourself and had to resort to whatever was in the cans under the sink, sometimes, cat food it was. And Kenny deserved better than cat food.
Kenny stepped further away from Karen for a brief moment, just a hand’s reach away. “We’re not a charity case, you know.” He mumbled, an embarrassed blush dusting his cheeks as he stared at the tiled floor.
“Trust me, I’m not doing this out of charity. I mean, shopping can be fun! I personally enjoy looking around stores, so how about we look around together for some things that you like? Is there anything new you wanna try? I’m happy to recommend some of my own favorite snacks! Which aisle is the candy in?”
“Hey mister, usually when people say ‘I wanna show you something to snack on’ or offer you candy in this context, they’re a pedophile, so I’m gonna take my sister and leave now if you don’t mind,” Kenny snapped, pulling the drawstrings of his hood so tightly that his face now only appeared through a crumpled hole the size of a donut.
‘Fuck.’ What a name to make for yourself in your first two weeks of being in a small, close-knit town.
Still, he doubted that Kenny truly meant any harm with that statement. If anything, he looked like he was simply having a moment of self-consciousness and wanted to leave as fast as possible. Taking this into consideration, Josh sighed and began to back away, nodding slowly. “Okay, okay, I got you. I’m not going to make you do anything you don’t want to, so I’m gonna keep shopping for myself for now, okay?”
“Kenny, wait!” Karen stumbled up and took her brother’s hand, pulling and making sure she had his attention. “He doesn’t remind me of the creepy pedal-man we met at Casa Bonita, Mr. Corey Haim. I don’t think he’s like him at all!”
It was a good, if not confusing attempt in Josh’s opinion, but Kenny clearly wasn’t convinced. He huffed dramatically, staring up at Josh as if trying to petrify him where he stood, despite the fact that he wasn’t nearly as intimidating as he seemed. Whether Kenny was aware of this fact or not was debatable, but the little guy was obviously stubborn as fuck, and he wasn’t about to budge by any means…
That is, until Karen started rocking back and forth on her heels, tugging on his wrist with vigor. “Also, I want to eat real food tonight! Like hot pockets or s’getti-O’s! Wouldn’t that be fun? Now Daddy doesn’t have to be mad or yell at us and Mommy about more frozen waffles for dinner! He might even forget to have his beer tonight!”
The effect was instantaneous on Kenny, his eyes narrowing deep in thought, although Josh knew there was no need. He knew what was going on in Kenny’s head all too well. Once Karen had made her claim, there was really no resistance anymore; he couldn’t bear to disappoint her.
Sure enough, within twenty minutes the trio were leaving Food 4 Little armed with over a hundred dollars worth of groceries, and Josh was pretty sure that he’d only spent forty of which on his and Addie’s food. Kenny zoomed ahead in front of him, holding up four bags in an attempt to outdo how many Josh could carry. “More than you can!” He cried, spinning and showing off how strong he was.
“My, you might just be a superhero, Kenny,” Josh teased, and Kenny reluctantly smiled, blushing and looking both ways about three times before crossing the street. ‘Finally, one of these kids has a safety-first mindset.’
“I’m most excited for the ice cream! We never get to have ice cream!” Karen cheered, practically glowing in her excitement. She wobbled along behind them with the tub of birthday cake flavored ice cream nestled in her grasp like a newborn baby, and Josh watched carefully for any approaching vehicles. “Mommy told me that she likes brownies and sweet treats right before my bedtime. She’s going to be so stoked!” She coughed off to the side, letting the spray land on Kenny instead of on top of the marvelous dessert in her arms.
Even with his arms laden with so many groceries, this was somehow the lightest that Josh had felt all day. “I bet she will be!” He reassured Karen, his heart practically melting when she beamed up at him with the biggest smile in the world. “Now it’s getting a little bit dark out, so I just wanted to ask if you two are sure you can make it home alright? Do you want me to call anyone to take you there?”
“We walked, actually. We live on the South side,” Kenny mumbled quietly as they crossed the street, eyes trained towards the ground as he spoke. For some reason, Josh had the suspicion that Kenny might have been embarrassed about this.
“Me too! I live a few streets down from that big wooden sign and the bus station for Denver,” Josh reassured, and Kenny nodded slowly in response, attempting a smile, but not quite achieving one.
Dusk continued to seep across the sky as the trio turned down the same street Josh had seen the first group of kids playing pirates, twin rows of colorful, cookie-cutter houses bordering the way to their destination. Despite the festive summer decorations, most of the front yards were adorned with snowmen, each with a colorful hat and scarf, and occasionally a carrot penis as well. Josh was particularly delighted to notice two that had been placed side by side, each outer stick ‘hand’ holding a pride flag, while the inner ones were entwined. It seemed like a nice, charming little street to live on; he couldn’t imagine why Kenny had been so reluctant to let him know that this was where he lived.
“So what grade are you guys going into? Only a week until school starts!” The man asked. Idle conversation with kids was something he was well versed in as a teacher, and he couldn’t help being curious how old these kids were, especially given that they were without supervision. Surely Kenny must have been a third grader at the oldest, maybe second, but-
“My big brother is going into fifth grade, and I’m going into second!” The little girl squeaked, seemingly unaware of Josh’ shock at the statement.
“F-fifth grade? Wait a minute…” the name and apparent financial situation combined was too conspicuous for Josh not to notice. He narrowed his eyes ever so slightly, and began to pick out the similarities between the boy standing in front of him, and one of the photographs provided by Mr. Mackey. Kenny was one of his students, his kids.
Well then.
Sometimes, in a movie, they say dumb shit like ‘no turning back now’. In all honesty, Josh could have turned back. He could have gone right back to Florida, could have quit. He could have joined the fucking circus if he really wanted to.
But he didn’t. He smiled and nodded as Kenny explained how fourth grade had sucked so bad, how his shitty teacher had gone from being gay, to a woman, to president, to gay again…admittedly, Josh didn’t understand all of what he said, not just because of the hood muffling his mouth, but because of the absurdity of the statements. All the same, he accepted it as truth, because someone listening to you can be the greatest gift at all if you grew up the way he had. Josh had the sneaking suspicion that Kenny had grown up under the same circumstances, so having someone who could give him the time to just talk as long as he needed to, and be able to understand him as well, would be extremely beneficial in the long run.
Once Kenny claimed that their house was in sight, the siblings ran off in its direction, waving around their cargo of grocery bags as they hollered their goodbyes and thank-you’s over their shoulders. Josh waved goodbye as they did so, unable to keep the smile off of his face as he watched them disappear down the street.
The rest of his walk home was quiet, a bit too much so. He didn’t realize why until he passed by one of the same kids he saw before, the blonde that he almost certainly remembered to be Butters Stotch, hiding in the bushes and giggling as though waiting to ambush somebody. He was still fully decked out in his pirate costume, with the only change being that his eyepatch was now on the eye it was intended to be worn on and he had a little parrot on his shoulder.
This time, Josh wasn’t too concerned; it wasn’t fully dark yet, and clearly these kids knew this town well. Besides, now knowing intensely how these kids played, somebody was bound to come looking for him soon to engage in another battle. Josh turned the knob of his own home next door and practically danced into the front room, eager to inform Addie of his decision.
“Honey, guess what?! I’m not quitting my job!”
Addie appeared in the kitchen doorway, his folded burgundy scrubs tucked under his arms. “That’s a thing we thought about doing?”
“Yeah, I know, I tweaked myself out a little bit,” Josh replied, brushing past Addie’s furrowed eyebrows with a shrug. “But I think I’m going to give this place a shot after all. These kids have been through a lot, and they deserve to have someone in their corner after everything I’ve heard about the way their old teacher conducted his lessons. The whole school system is treating them like garbage Addie, it’s disgraceful. And disgusting, too…”
Over the course of the next hour, Josh decided to relay a condensed version of what Mr. Mackey and Ms. Woman had told him to his partner, describing the way that the kids had been systematically grouped together under the ‘troubled’ label by a school board that didn’t even bat an eye. He never gave any specific details about what had happened to the kids themselves, but Addie understood the situation regardless. When Josh was finished, there was little more for the other man to do but shake his head in disbelief.
“Babe, I’m so sorry. I knew something was off when you came home the other day, I should’ve said something.”
“I should have said something too,” Josh replied, staring down at his shoes like a child as he spoke. “Bottling it up never helps… not that it matters, I’m staying anyway. But I just feel so lost right now, and I have no clue how to tackle this. I mean, what would you do if you were me?”
Addie ran a hand through his hair and shook his head. “The honest answer is that I would quit. I would leave before things get ugly and not put yourself at risk of that Cartman kid fucking you over. But I also couldn’t name anyone better at dealing with kids’ bullshit than you. So go for it, I guess, but don’t lose yourself to this job. If it starts becoming too much, back away. You’re a person too, and you deserve just as much respect as your kids.”
“So that’s that? I just take this on and hope that it goes well?” Josh received a shrug in response to his question, and he shuffled closer to Addie, snuggling next to him like a heat-seaking animal. Addie, not necessarily one for romance and clichés, held him tightly before pressing a chaste kiss into his temple, drawing some of Josh’ curls away from his face before their eyes met once more.
“I know you, Josh. Everything will be alright if it’s you at the helm.”
‘As long as the ship doesn’t sink,’ Josh thought to himself.
And maybe it would. And maybe it wouldn’t. And maybe this would become the best year of his life, or the very worst. There was no map to guide him, and no compass to point the way as he sailed into uncharted territory. All he had was a gut feeling, a supportive first mate, and eyes focused on the encroaching storm ahead.
And suddenly, the dead rat didn’t seem nearly as frightening as it had on the first day.