River Teeth

Rubber Ocean

June 3, 2017

HAVE YOU SEEN ME?

Name: Stanley Marsh

Age: 17

Description: Blue eyes, medium-length black hair, approximately 5'5" in height, and weighs about 140 lbs. Has a paw print tattoo on the inside of left wrist. If you know the whereabouts of Stanley please notify the South Park Police.

Kyle didn't have the heart to tell Sharon that it might be better to create a missing person ad on Facebook to reach more people, but he also figured that not everyone uses social media, so, why not? But he hated putting up these flyers as if Stan were a missing dog. He also didn't want to believe that this was his current reality.
I've done nothing but pick at the skin around my fingernails and run my thumb over his ring- turn it around and around my finger hoping he'll appear in my doorway perfectly in once piece and he'll say "I'm sorry, babe. I still love you. I won't go away again."

He sat in his white Jeep Wrangler, holding the flyer in front of the steering wheel. The photo that Sharon used was Stan's senior photo. His hair had been combed back and he was wearing a tie that was too skinny. His dimples were edited out. To Kyle, it didn't look like Stan at all, at least, not the way he knew him. Stan hardly ever combed his hair and there were always holes in the armpits of his tee shirts. The Stan that he knew also hated having his picture taken, and it definitely showed in that glossy, stylized photo.
He put the flyer back on the stack on the passenger seat, then lit a cigarette. He only did it when the stress was too much to be coped with naturally. 10-year old Kyle would have been disappointed.
That flyer had missed some things... it could never capture the way he laughed. How much he loved animals, how he always smelled like oranges for some reason...

I need to stop thinking about him in the past tense. He took a long inhale and let the smoke billow out of his nostrils as tears rolled down his freckled cheeks.

...

The paw print tattoo wasn't the only scarred skin on Stan. When they were 16, Kyle went through a phase where he wanted to be a tattoo artist, despite not having much artistic aptitude. He could draw some things, but he had just liked the idea of having elaborate sleeves and wearing muscle tanks, just inking away all day. When he got his hands on a stick-and-poke kit, he locked himself in his room and immediately went to work. He chose a killer whale. A killer whale on the very top of his left thigh. More meat there, he figured, less pain.
It wasn't as bad as he thought it was going to be, and when Stan saw it, he asked for one too.
"You really want me to tattoo you?" Kyle asked. The two of them were in bed. Stan was snuggled into Kyle's neck, his warm breath gently caressing it.
"Yeah, but I don't want a killer whale," he said, "I want a humpback."
"I just gave you a humpback," Kyle turned over to look at him.
Stan rolled his eyes, pulled Kyle in closer, "you know what the fuck I mean."
"Where do you want it?"
"Same as you, but on the other side so when we stand together sometimes, the whales will be together. Just don't tell my parents."
Kyle ran his hand through Stan's raven hair and kissed the tip of his nose, "you're my whale."
"What?" Stan laughed, "What does that even mean?"
"It means... I don't know... you're cute." He couldn't think of loving anything or anyone more than he loved Stan at that moment, or ever since then.
"I'm not..." Stan protested.
"You really are." Kyle pulled him into a deep kiss. He climbed on top of him.
"Kyle!"

...

"Kyle! Hello?"
Kyle snapped out of his daydream to see a familiar mass of blonde hair and blue eyes.
"Oh, hi Kenny."

Kenny scratched at his face. It was obvious he had just shaved. He smelled of Old Spice and a little bit like weed. His hair was grown out again and pulled back into a ponytail with a few small braids. He was wearing his Invader Zim gauges. Sheila hated the fact that Kenny stretched his ears, but Kyle thought the look suited him.