Mr. Garrison's eighth grade class stayed in the circle. The room was silent.
"I told you it was dangerous to run a class without a teacher" Heidi leered "You guys thought I was cray but I was right! People can get hurt. When I said that I didn't mean physically hurt I mean't-"
"Heidi, shut the fuck up" Bebe flipped her off, joined by a chorus of other students hands.
"Well, this is what I was talking about!" she retorted "Kids aren't equipped to handle stuff like this! Look at Cartman!"
"Heidi, I swear to god" Bebe muttered.
"He had it coming" Red remarked.
"Shut up!" Craig yelled.
"Hey! Everybody take it easy" Jenny said "That's over with"
"Look, it's not the end of the world" Kyle shrugged "A kid in our class died and some people cried. What's so horrible about that?"
"Today's the six month anniversary" Bebe murmured in a soft voice "Butters died October twenty eighth"
Everybody looked at the calendar. Wendy sat up. She took a small white tissue and blew her nose.
"I always thought it was weird" Craig started.
"That we stopped talking about him" Craig said, rubbing the back of his neck "I mean, first he was here, then he was gone, and we just..."
"What did you expect?" Clyde asked.
"I don't know" Craig shrugged his shoulders, and flung some hair out of his face "That we'd at least mention him once and a while"
Wendy wiped her eyes. She took a deep quavery breath and the class turned to her as if she might speak, but she did not.
"It's true" Lola said "We never talk about him"
"I think about him a lot" Stan mentioned.
"Yeah, me too" Jason said "I've had dreams about Butters"
"We never wrote about him" Red remarked.
"Fact" Clyde nodded.
"Let's write, right now" Kyle begged "Come on, let's do it"
"No way" Kevin closed his eyes. He sat on his hand. "No fucking way! I'm finished writing! I've got writer's cramp!"
"C'mon" Heidi urged "We've got just enough time before the assembly"
"What I want to know is: Who elected you teacher?" Craig demanded.
"You got a better idea?" Heidi shot back angrily.
Everybody got up and walked back to their desks. Wendy approached the stereo. She flipped through the CD's until she found what she was looking for- the 1812 Overture.
The music started play through out the room. It was lively, stirring, bringing back painful memories of a lost student. As much as anything, those notes brought the presence of Butters Stotch back into the classroom.
Wendy had finally gotten her eyes dry, but now the tears started to come back and she went to fetch the box of tissues, once again.