A/N: Yeah, I know you all are mentally yelling at me for posting such a short chapter. Trust me; the next one will be longer. This one originally was, but it didn’t seem to work, so I’m splitting it into two.

The feeling of snow melting down the back of a parka is never a good one. Seriously. In fact, I’d recommend avoiding such situations. But, of course, when you are thrust from the bowels of Hell (literally) that type of thing seems to happen.

“Fuck,” I mutter, brushing off the fresh snow that had accumulated during the night. I sit up, blinking slowly, taking in my surroundings. I was at the bus stop. Again. I swear that seems to be the only portal from Hell and back in this hick town. They should consider building another one, preferably indoors.

Now that I’m back, I have no idea where to start. Break into her house? Interrogate Kyle? Fuck if I knew. The logical answer seemed to be school, but this is South Park, where logic is not used at the best of times, let alone the worst of times. If my head told me it would be best to go to school, that would be a good reason to go to church. Screw it; I might as well go to school. Maybe for once there will be a reasonable answer for all this - although it’s looking less and less likely.

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After a highly nutritious breakfast of coffee and cigarettes, I push open the rusting metal front doors of South Park High, the hinges shrieking at an inhumane pitch. I cringe, but manage to get through the hallways undetected, slipping into the back row of English class.

“And what do you think Hawthorne intended to symbolize with the motif of the scarlet letter?”

“That it was that ugly skank’s time of the month?” Cartman leans back in his seat, a smirk on his piggish face.

Wendy rolls her eyes, “That’s an incredibly sexist thing to say.”

“Whatever, hippie.”

Wendy opens her mouth to say something, but the bell rings, cutting her off.

Overexcited fifteen year olds push each other out of the way, trying to get to their lockers, the bathroom, janitor’s closets or the back courtyard. Only Kyle remains, putting away his notebook and pens with excruciating slowness. His ushanka is pulled down over his eyes, his shoulders hunched. I take a step closer, leaning slightly to the right in order to get a close up of his face. Tears run silently down his cheeks, he bites his lower lip in a futile attempt to stop the flow.

Something about him, in so much pain and so alone, makes my chest ache. I wish there was something, anything, I could do to help but I know there is nothing I can say to make his pain go away. So I slip away, deep in thought. I was going to have to make like the Hardly boys and go sleuthing.

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It was easier getting her locker combination than I thought it was going to be. That office chick sure is sexually repressed.

“25-17-81,” I mutter under my breath, turning the lock right and left. With a click it opens, and I’m overwhelmed with the musky scent of girlish perfume. Or possibly incense. Either way, it smelled kind of….. sexy. A mirror hangs on the back wall; on the door various pictures of Heidi, Kyle and her friends stuck together with heart shaped magnets. I sort through a messy pile of schoolbooks, looking for anything that could possibly help me. I come across a spare tampon, with a shudder I chuck it in the trash. Bad memories never really die.

A plain black composition book is shoved to one side; I pick it up and flip through the pages. It was filled with neat cursive handwriting, intermingling with random doodles of people and…I squint, looking closer. Was that a pot leaf?

I shrug my shoulders and slam the door shut. Time to catch up on my reading.